Shamubeel Eaqub: Why institutional landlords should be better for renters than 'accidental' landlords

Economy Watch

Renting in New Zealand today is more difficult than a decade ago, with fewer properties available, rents continuing to increase, and the quality of rental properties not much better, Shamubeel Eaqub says. However, the economist and co-author of the 2015 book Generation Rent, rethinking New Zealand's priorities, says it's not all bad news.

Speaking in the latest episode of interest.co.nz's Of Interest podcast, Eaqub says the "lived reality of renting" has got harder over the past decade, but the regulatory settings are slowly improving.

"We need to ensure there's sufficient renters' rights ... because in New Zealand renting is so insecure and is such a problematic thing for so many people."

One area giving Eaqub optimism is the rise of build to rent, where landlords must offer 10-year rental tenancy agreements.

"I've been a long time fan of institutional landlords rather than accidental landlords. When you are in the business of land lording, you want to have as little turnover as possible, whereas if you're an accidental landlord, you are much more interested in having quick turnover and being able to sell it off and all those other bits and pieces. The tenant is kind of incidental to the story and a bit of an annoyance, really."

Eaqub says build to rent offers two types of security; tenure security and financial security.

"Because more often than not [build to rent] will come with contracts that will have a known level of [rental] increase for the next, say three years, so you can plan your finances. Whereas in a normal tenancy you have only certainty for 12 months and then you don't know what will happen next."

Build to rent is adding new housing supply targeted for one particular use, which he says is unusual in NZ.

"If you look at what happens in New Zealand, or how it has generally happened in New Zealand in the past, it's the idea of filtering, right? You build houses which are for new homes and for rich people, and then the older homes that are secondhand, that kind of gets recycled into the rental market."

"So I'm very encouraged to see this new supply that's coming in, that's very much targeted towards renting specifically. Because if you think about the pressures that we see in terms of emergency housing, social housing and all those kinds of things, that's happening because people are falling out of the rental market, because the rental market is short supplied and is very expensive. And so the more we can do to get more supply directly and retained in the rental market, the better it is," Eaqub says.

He also talks about his disappointment at the fracturing of the Labour-National consensus on medium density residential standards (MDRS).

"[The consensus] showed me for the first time the grown-up-ness of the way that our politicians can respond to structural problems, that we can put aside our political differences and just do something because it's the right thing to do, not because you're on one side of the House or the other. But that grown up moment of politics lasted very, very briefly, and we threw it away at the first chance when the election campaign started," Eaqub says.

In the podcast Eaqub also talks about NIMBYS, the construction sector, what's driving rents, problems with local government, his views on rent controls, the accommodation supplement, emergency housing, what the rental market may be like for his kids' generation, and more.

*You can find all episodes of the Of Interest podcast here.