HI @Adriena Daunt
Thanks for think my little rant was a help ;-)
Yes, the Healthy Homes Act is going to stir things up a bit, in the main for all the right reasons. The one thing that really worries us as investors are who is going to be in charge of making the decisions about what the standards are actually going to be more so than having a standard. Most Landlords/investors want to provide as good a property as their budget can provide as it is just good business sense to do that as a happy client is generally a paying client, unlike what the politicians seem to get told about us ;-) .
Some of these people trying to get involved in setting the standards have no real reality on life to understand what should and shouldn't be in an effective standard to the point that some testing mechanisms being trialled aren't even passing new builds that have just passed there Code of Compliance (so if its good enough to pass the new building code why is it not good enough for a minimum standard???)
As Dean mentioned above planning on appreciation outside of I would say just Auckland, is probably a bit of a guess (I wonder if Wellington and Hamilton will be much different to CHCH and Dunedin for expected growth in the medium term, and Tauranga may need to adjust its demographic growth if that is going to be sustainable seeing as how many retirees like to go there). But it is very hard if not impossible to find a market that gives both above average capital appreciation and cashflow anywhere so deciding which is more important to you is the key and heading in one direction or the other.
Dunners is rising at the moment, on the back of increasing population mainly by the looks of things, so good signs. The work does seem to be here at the moment and newer jobs coming in to town. If the hospital build goes ahead as planned then there should be even more steady money coming in during the build over the next 5 or so years too. The Uni has been buying and building capacity which has kept a lot of the builders busy during the downturn which never quite got to be more than a bit of a settle down for us. Again like Dean said we don't really get booms but we don't tend to get busts either, just steady wee rolls in the market cycle in general. If the Uni then starts to utilize all this capacity it has built with increased student roles then we should be on another steady upswing for a wee while.
If the hospital build and the 2GP come together at the same time then we could get some strong trades incomes coming in (although capacity constraints might bugger that a bit but that is NZ and even worldwide) so I personally am going to be looking at older stock that can be redeveloped or added on to with the old building refreshed if they are in good enough nick and a location on their site so that to me is where the council and the market would like to go. Smaller easy care sections and properties, near amenities ideally on brownfield/infill sites so less new expensive infrastructure for the council to provide and more population able to make the best of what the city already has to offer that can be utilized more.
So Cashflow is likely to be the best play with forced appreciation through redevelopment or refurbishment to keep the investing machine moving along and to end up with stock up to the new standards, that's how I am thinking about playing it personally.
If anyone wants to have a bit of a chat about specifics feel free to PM me and we can have a look for you
Kyle
