Prior to Christmas, the IRD issued a draft statement confirming some of the traps that exist when renting out property via platforms like Airbnb, Book a Bach, etc. In this month's blog I thought I would set out examples that we have seen over the past few years as use of these peer to peer sites has exploded. Trap ... More 

Even before Winston Peters made his announcement that he would form a coalition government with Labour, we were seeing some disturbing trends in the banking sector. You need to be aware of these if you are looking to buy a home or investment property.  There have been a number of cases where bank customers have been granted preapprovals, only ... More 

2008 was a year all of us would like to forget.  It was the year when the global economic crisis hit and many individuals, businesses and countries went bankrupt, redundancies happened in their droves, unemployment went up and government cutbacks were the norm.   Those of you who have been through other recessions will attest that this was definitely ... More 

In my day to day interaction with clients I meet a lot of small business owners who are in their embryonic stage. They are busy practising their particular expertise and, as such, most budding entrepreneurs do not willingly spend time thinking about the administration of the business.  I understand that, as they want to make a dollar before they ... More 

As you may be aware, there is a new law that requires all tenanted homes to be insulated by 1 July 2019. Anyone who owns rental property must ensure their properties are insulated to the required standard by this date. At GRA we’ve been getting a lot of questions about whether the cost of insulating a rental property is ... More 

It is a requirement in New Zealand for parties to provide their IRD numbers when buying or selling real estate (whether as an individual or through another entity such as a company or trust). Normally this does not pose any sort of problem. However, there will be significant issues if you are selling a property that has been generating ... More 

Recently I've seen several interesting client problems which would undoubtedly have resulted in lots of money being lost and lots of legal fees being incurred if these clients hadn't had GRA's Professional Trustee on board.  Having now experienced three property cycles in my adult lifetime, I know these sorts of issues (and others) commonly arise when an economy and ... More 

It’s been an interesting start to 2017 with a much tighter credit market than what we have seen for most of the last decade. While the majority of the media have been concentrating on the fact that the market seems to have slowed since the 40% deposit rule introduction, I put more down to banks themselves pulling back in ... More 

Do you currently have life insurance in place? Unless you’re single, living the high life, flying solo, and not bothered what happens to your debts when you die, then you’re going to need to have the right life cover in place. Life insurance isn’t something that you lie in bed at night thinking about. Rather, life insurance generally comes ... More 

At Property Ventures we are increasing our focus on new builds as investments because we see tremendous advantages from a financing perspective. Not only do investors get pristine new and low maintenance properties in better areas, they get the benefit of 80% LVRs and tax advantages from higher chattel depreciation.   These smart tax and finance benefits make investing ... More