Politics 🗳️ NZ Politics

[miket12]

BNZ have now dropped their 6 and 18 month and their two- and three-year mortgage rates ahead of Thursday's OCR announcement. They'd previously dropped their one-year mortgage rate.

Speculation is that the banks have factored in a 25-basis point drop in the OCR but I personally wouldn't fix until after Thursday in case the RBNZ drops the OCR by 50 basis points.

We've got two mortgages on the rental property... one is off set against our "rainy day fund" and the other came of fixed on to floating at the end of September. We're waiting until after the OCR announcement to see if the banks move further in interest rate drops and whether we'll fix for 6 or 12 months. Isn't it fun playing the mortgage interest rate game? No really.... but at least they're heading down and not up!!!

 

[jonesy101]

If One.nz have any sense they should remove every character from those stupid ads. Brother from another udder and the man munching on a biscuit can stay though.

 

[miket12]

The hatred on Winne at the moment is nothing compared to what a number of developers/builders in Auckland are feeling towards Chris Bishop and the Auckland mayor/councilors at the moment.

A bit of background. Under the previous government (and in consultation with National), Megan Woods released a town planning proposal for councils to adopt called Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS) which allowed for greater intensification by allowing up to three houses to be placed on a site and up to three Storeys high without requiring a Land Use resource consent.

Auckland council then put into place Plan Change 78: Intensification (PC 78) which allowed for large parts of Auckland to be changed from the zoning requirements of the old district plan (called the Auckland Unitary Plan). Even though PC 78 hadn't been fully implemented, Auckland Council started accepting developments for the changed zoning requirements.

Then there was the general election and National and the other coalition partners decided that the MDRS didn't go far enough... they wanted Councils to allow for even greater intensification by, amongst other things, allowing for taller apartment buildings within walking distances from train stations, transport hubs and "city centres".

This meant, that last month, Auckland councillors voted to accept Plan Change 120 (PC 120) as a replacement to PC 78. The problem is that when they kicked PC 78 to the curve, ALL buildings designed to it (and the MDRS) instead had to comply with Auckland Unitary Plan. This means, any resources consents currently under review by Council now have to be changed back to the Unitary Plan requirements which, in most cases, only allows for two dwellings on a site without a Land Use resource consent and can only be two storeys high.

Any dwellings that are currently under construction or with a building consent will need to have a Certificate of Compliance applied for before 9 October. In most cases, neighbours permission (good luck getting that if the neighbour didn't want a three storey dwelling built beside them) will be needed for Council to issue a Corticate of Compliance.

The happiest people are Auckland City town planners who now have a huge number of Resource Consent applications to work through and surveyors/private town planners as they apply for resource consent dispensations for all the developments currently underway.

There are some extremely pissed off developers out there who have spent thousands on documentation for developments which now may be useless!!!