Herald omits key facts
Once again the media do not tell us something important. The Herald (on Sunday) reports:
The dire shortage of houses for sale in the Auckland market has desperate buyers going door-to-door pleading with homeowners to sell. …
Auckland couple Kate Sutton and Oliver Mannion have taken a different approach, asking Remax agents Peter Thomas and Roshni Sami to use their names in personal letters to homeowners to try to secure their first home.
So does this random couple have a solution?
They said the situation in Auckland was so bad the Government needed to introduce a capital gains tax if there was to be any relief for buyers.
They believed taxing investment properties was the only way to make home ownership affordable for families and less attractive for investors.
On a minor note, they are economically illiterate. There are some sounds reasons to have a capital gains tax. But reducing house prices is not one of them. A tax on housing will increase house prices, not decrease them.
But is it a coincidence that this random couple said that the solution is capital gains tax – the key tax proposal by the Labour Party?
Either the reporter was unaware that Kate has been the Womens vice president of the Labour Party for the last six years, or they decided not to tell the public this.
Kate was also a candidate for Labour in 2008 and 2011. The failure to disclose this in the article is appalling. Even worse it is their lead story online with the headline “Buyers begging for home”.
I would also point out the choice of “desperate” couple was shall we say debatable:
But even with a good deposit and a budget of between $600,000 and $700,000, the desperate couple are still flatting in an Onehunga property Sutton and her brother own.
So already part-owner of a property. So Kate was going to become an evil multiple property owner who needs to be taxed more!
Incidentially Trade Me has 5,220 properties listed for sale in Auckland that cost under $700,000 and are three or more bedrooms.
This is what you call desperate and begging.
UPDATE: Kate brags on Facebook how she managed to get the Herald on Sunday to write about Capital Gains Tax. So was the HoS an unwitting dupe, or an accomplice?
