Catalyst2 had a successful seminar last month. There were 5 presenters from 4 independent companies. The room was full with a few people having to stand. The theme of the night was about the window of opportunity in this current market. Peter Turner summarized Alan Bollard's viewpoint on where the New Zealand economy is going. It appears that we should be out of the recession by the end of the year and according to John Key, we will be one of the first countries to enter the recovery phase. Thanks to the fact that we have a strong agricultural base.
We discussed Tony Alexander's interpretation on the effect of increased migration and the fact that we entered the recession with a shortage of houses in New Zealand. He predicts that we sill soon have a housing crisis in that there will be a shortage of supply.
Tanya Kwasza spoke about the advantages of investing in high grade new property investments. Double glazing, extra insulation, and the mere fact that your investment is brand new gives your property a competitive edge with tenants. There are obvious advantages of having lengthy building warranties and guarantees, particularly as they are from one of the foremost New Zealand builders, GJ Gardner. She also spoke about the fact that as tax benefits were diminished due to the properties virtually self-funding, there were more tax contributions to be had in the form of the higher depreciation that is offered with new properties, particularly Home and Incomes with the increased number of wet areas.
Loan Market spoke about the interest rates and for many it would make sense to spread risks by floating some of the mortgage and fixing the rest. Loan Market also illustrated how straight forward it was to finance a Home and Land package.
Rex de Bettencor of Quinovic talked about successful techniques of assuring quality tenants. Little things like noting who took their shoes off when they went to view an open home and also only allocating short open home times as to condense a lot of people effectively increasing the pressure to let.
At Catalyst2, we believe that investing in property over the long term is still very viable particularly that we can now show you cash-flow or positive properties.
