Index distortion not what it seems. A reader’s point about the ongoing shares v houses debate sounds fair enough. “Your comparisons do not compare like with like,” he writes, “because you are using an index for shares, which only covers some companies, whereas for housing, you are using the average over all houses.”
Shares easier than reader thinks. It’s like a red rag to a bull. A paragraph in a reader’s email started, “Without getting into the share v property argument…” But why not get into it? After all, it’s at the very heart of most New Zealanders’ thinking about long-term investment. The reader, a mortgage broker, goes on to say, “I believe it is good for people to have a dabble in shares with spare cash but use property as their main retirement plan, even if they go hard out paying off just one rental property.
Stuff and happiness: Buying things you don’t really need. Also in this issue: From the Mailbox — Should a young man buy himself a house?
Another reason to spread your investments. I can think of three good reasons to hold lots of different shares, as opposed to one or just a few. Two reasons are obvious, but one is less so, even though it may be just as important.
What we don’t know CAN hurt us. One of the first things journalists are taught is to make the first sentence of an article a “grabber”, something that will perhaps surprise readers and make them read on. So this column is officially starting now: Every New Zealander over 65 gets NZ Super, no matter how rich they are.
The last word (hopefully) on taxation of rentals. Reader feedback keeps coming about the taxation of rental properties. So I’ve decided to go to the horse’s mouth, Inland Revenue. But first, a typical email on the subject…
Let’s keep that chewing gum money. Please forgive us, Dr Cullen, and don’t take away our chewing gum tax cut! I know some of us have been scathing about it. As you said recently, “I have noted that people have said they don’t really think it’s worth having. If people say that, then of course they may find their wish has been granted. Be careful what you ask for, or you may get it.”
Views on negative gearing are poles apart. Negative gearing is like the death penalty. People feel strongly both ways about it, judging by reactions to my last column. In that column, I wrote that negative gearing — which occurs when a landlord makes year-by-year cash losses on a mortgaged property — is becoming more common. This is mainly because rents haven’t risen nearly as fast as house prices.
Negative gearing may come back to haunt you. Many landlords say they don’t mind or even like to be negatively geared — making year-by-year cash losses on a mortgaged investment. But it never looked all that appealing to me. And recently I heard a rather compelling argument against it.
Readers rally to back houses. It always happens. Whenever I write about investing in houses and shares in the same column, people say I’m unfairly negative about houses. In my final column last year, I wrote that the rise in house prices over the previous year was slower than the rise in: New Zealand shares, hedged overseas shares and unhedged overseas shares, all including dividends. That surprised me, and I thought it might surprise you.