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Yep and remove any thought of any Govt. gaurantee, any time. Place the repsonsibility for the bank company directly where it belongs. With the owners.i.e. shareholders.
That’s how the rest of our companies operate.

A higher level for investors than for home buyers will make this to their advantage (taking foreign investors out of the equation by placing a residency test would certainly help).

i have done hundreds and hundreds of mortgages for people and what i have found is that people with 5% deposit loans more often than not just want to get onto the ladder so they dont risk property outstripping their ability to buy.

if the mortgage is $100 a week more than renting (not unrealistic), and you have a 5% deposit for a 300K house, it will take you 3 years to save the additional 5% to get to 10% (without sucking even more money out of your pocket), in that time the 300K house you liked the look of when you had 5% is now out of your price range due to its rise in value.

so why cost them more? if they can buy the house at 300K, over the 3 years that they would have had to save 15K more, thier house will have raised in value and they will have made some principal repayments.

i have plenty of clients who have managed to knock massive amounts off thier loans, that they would not have been able to even get if these stupid LVR restrictions were in place.

the government need simply get out of the way, if banks and lenders are prepared to carry the risk of 95% (or higher) loans, then thats their problem and they will profit or lose on their own bat.

But I do believe they should look to make other investments more attractive rather than introducing punitive measures to make owning rental properties less attractive. Why not drop tax on other investments? I’m sure alot of people would be content with putting their money into a savings account earning interest with little or no tax paid, especially if they increased the supply of land and reduced compliance costs of building.

Smart landlords and investors made a killing on Labour’s ‘property speculation tax’ in the early 1970′s – not what Norm Kirk and Bill Rowling had in mind.

Does National have a response – being reliant on rising house values to encourage new building (and some associated attempt to free up more land for building) is asking those aspiring to own a home to be patient or despair and join the upward demand bidding up prices – hoping mortgage rates remain low.

The problem with a 15% rebate is that new property buyers are not usually first home buyers.

A CGT on investment property would encourage some investors to pool capital (sell a rental or two dependeing on equity and their existing home) and build a large new home free of such CGT liability. Such building of high end property frees up existing stock for first home buyers etc. A CGT does lead to new building.

A 10% deposit for home ownership is not onerous. Those who cannot save it will not survive a mortgage rate rise in any case.

The market demand problem is investor leveraging off the property value gains to buy more and more properties. A higher LTV ratio for those who already own property is appropriate – say 20-33%. Maybe adding 2% per annum to the equity so that the property value/inflation rise is not used to leverage borrowing against the investment propoerty.

Those saying that investors could borrow from elsewhere – water around the rock – well what if LTV included all debt finance not just bank? And to back this up – when a rental investor claimed his mortgage payments as a cost against rent income – he had to demonstrate that the mortgage debt this came from met the required LTV test.

National could very well be shooting itself in the foot if it adopts such a policy since those aspiring to home ownership are more likely than not National voters.

Govt. should learn that people are smarter than them and should get the fuck out of our lives.

We are not all born equal even if the socialist status seeking pollies think so.

Old saying Where theres a will theres a way and some posters above obviously in mortgage lending business have already set out some of the gaming schemes.

Best for Gumint to get the hell out of way apart from repealing RMA and regulating Local Bodies charges ( rip offs) and let the buyers and sellers and builders get on with the job.

You don’t have to hire staff and deal with all the hassle and paperwork that goes with that; you seldom need licences, permits, consents or whatever; you don’t have to deal with GST, and paperwork generally is minimal compared to other businesses; you are hardly affected by complex consumer legislation; and so on.

In short, government has legislated to make other forms of investment unattractive and therefore unpopular. Cut back that legislation and the problem will go away.