The Government’s Budget will have little impact on the housing market, property experts have told OneRoof.
The biggest property-related changes impact landlords and had already been flagged before Budget day.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis reconfirmed on Thursday that the Government would spend $729 million on restoring interest rate deductibility and $45m on reducing the bright-line test to two years.
Ray White Manukau co-owner Tom Rawson said the Budget was “underwhelming” for real estate. Nothing new had been announced and the tax cuts that Willis set out would go more towards meeting the increased cost of living rather than the buying of more or better houses.
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“It’s just going to be status quo,” he told OneRoof. “It’s not going to be pushing people up or down. This extra money that people are going to have, I think that’s going to be utilised in other areas other than property.”
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CoreLogic chief economist Kelvin Davidson agreed there were no surprises in the Budget.
“The removal of the first home grant might have been a surprise if they hadn’t announced it in advance, but we knew it in advance so that’s neither here nor there.”
Davidson said there was nothing in the Budget that would tip the balance either way for the housing market. “What it boils down to for the housing market is more indirect and it’s more a question of will the tax cuts be inflationary, because if they are inflationary then it just adds to the whole sense of higher-for-longer mortgage interest rates.”
Kiwibank chief economist Jarrod Kerr says it's a “no frills, no surprises budget”. Photo / Supplied
He too believed the tax cuts would go towards survival – repaying debts and meeting the cost of living – rather than extra spending.
“It’s not like people are suddenly going to rush out and go, ‘I’ve got $50 a fortnight, I’m going to buy a house’. It’s more about looking after what you’ve already got, paying your existing mortgage.”
Kiwibank chief economist Jarrod Kerr labelled it a “no frills, no surprises budget”, noting that the Government had delivered on its promises and not much else.
“It’s a government that has found itself standing on some quicksand and not a beautiful beach. The numbers are softening and the actual economy is smaller than they thought, the tax cuts are smaller than they thought and the projections are softer than they thought.”
He said the Government’s promised tax cuts would give people an extra $10 to $20 a fortnight, which was “not earthshattering stuff”. They were unlikely to have an impact on the property market.
If the tax cuts prove inflationary, then interest rates could stay higher for longer, and put downwards pressure on the housing market. Photo / Fiona Goodall
“This is the first time the tax brackets have been lifted since 2010 so it needed to happen. It could have happened a lot more if they wanted to keep up with inflation so there’s still more of us in higher bracket than what would otherwise have been the case if we had kept up with inflation.”
Kerr said the high interest rates were still the biggest influence on the housing market right now. “That interest rate is really restricting the market and once we see that coming off, wholesale rates will price it in first, banks will keep lowering mortgage rates and that’s when we will see investors coming back into the market.”
Bayleys head of insights Chris Farhi agreed changes around income tax were immaterial and said the movement in interest rates would be a much more significant factor for the housing market.
“The awkward thing would be if the tax changes then translate to a slight inflationary pressure and that then stalls the interest rate cuts. But the changes aren’t that huge that you would expect a massive impact on inflation and therefore we are kind of less worried about that.”
Bayleys head of insights Chris Farhi says the changes aren't big enough to have an impact on the housing market. Photo / Fiona Goodall
New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty managing director Mark Harris said there wasn’t much in the announcement that would alter things and expressed disappointment that it hadn’t addressed foreign buyer rules.
“The money is on the table. There’s plenty of high net individuals enquiring, we are getting them almost weekly and having to turn them away.”
He was still hopeful the Government would at some point reconsider relinquishing the foreign buyer ban because they were just turning investment away.
“You would think it would be the right time to be considering things like that but maybe later in the year or another time.”
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