Buying Housing for Education

Houses are getting more and more expensive these days, yet they are more and more important. Secondary schools have since forever had limits on who can apply and enroll in the school roll. This is normally done by partitioning the city into “zones” where students in the correct zones are automatically accepted into the school.

Clearly some schools are better than the others.

Schools like Westlake Boys/Girls High School continually dominate rankings and achievements, especially on the North Shore. Why send your kid to Birkenhead Colwestlake boyslege when there’s a chance for them to go to Westlake? And that is the thought of many parents nowadays as they either try to cheat the system (“Hey can I borrow your letterbox?”) to even purchasing a house that is in-zone in order to secure their child’s education. Even though education is no guarantee of success, it definitely helps a lot and I can see why parents are willing to go above and beyond for their kids. I recently stumbled over a Westlake Boys High School zoning information page and this reflects my sentiments exactly. There is a huge influx of demand for such properties as families seek to have their kids receive a very good education.  I applaud them but at the same time I realise how difficult it must be for those who do not even have the privilege to own their own home. Such is life, I guess we all have something to strive for.

Houses in these areas are undoubtedly flash and honestly, we’re all jealous of them (whether we like to admit it or not). If all their money is hard-earned, there’s nothing to hate. Let’s try to prosper as a nation together. If Auckland housing doesn’t fix itself, rent! Or save for an apartment. We need to take control of our own futures, while politics is important and lobbying, demonstrating, protesting has its merits, I believe the crux of this is entitlement. Let’s not be entitled and work hard and earn everything ourselves.

Auckland Housing… a Crisis?

Seems as though prices are going back up again. With the recent release by LINZ that the majority of purchases are not from foreign buyers, it really puts a dent not only to the credibility of some parties (ahem Labour) but also raises the question… What really is driving Auckland’s housing “bubble”? Where is the money coming from?

Despite anecdotal evidence of foreigners buying up every property at every auction, the statistics show otherwise. Could there be other avenues to explain this? Possibly foreigners could be just incorporate companies and circumventing IRD number requirements that way. If not, we have to be wary at the types of restrictions the public is pressuring the government to implement – foreign purchasing restrictions, land tax and the already implemented IRD restriction is already signalling to the rest of the world that New Zealand is almost against foreign investment despite how ludicrous that sounds. Coupled with our large OIO rejections and now this scandal with Foreign trusts, it makes me wonder what’s going to be next and how attractive New Zealand will be in the eyes of foreign investment.

And YES we do need foreign investment. Our economy is quite reliant on it whether we like it or not. Unless we can suddenly generate intellectual property that vastly creates value on our primary production (see Comvita and Seadragon as huge proponents to this which is good) our country will not be wealthy and we will probably not survive. We need foreign expertise and investment in both financial capital and human capital.

The Filipino Trump and the lack of media

It’s a shame we don’t have more coverage on this in our media. The Philippines electing Rodrigo Duterte as president is crazy but reality. Popularly nicknamed “the Filipino Trump” is an understatement and shows how little we care, trivialise and joke about these important issues.

This is the same person who vows to kill 10,000 criminals and jokes about heinous crimes such as murder and rape. Not exactly the person I want in power. However this points to a more damning issue: the desperation of people to vote in someone who seeks to remove corruption. No policy can be greater than this and people are willing to overlook some of his more brash and infamous comments and views if he is able to do exactly just that. A sad state that we are in.

aucklander

It is one thing to be anti-establishment, and another to be like Mr. Duterte. But if he can do what he sets out to do (with corruption) then I guess that is a another step of progress.

 

John Key thrown out of debating chamber!

What a timely news article! This is Mr. Key’s first ever ejection from Parliament during his tenure as Prime Minister.

Over the Panama Papers no less. Clearly there’s a lot of controversy around foreign trusts and whether or not international firms and lawyers are using our lenient tax laws for the purposes of tax planning. Don’t think I’ve ever seen him lose his cool like that before, hopefully when the dust settles we can have a clear and concise future of our tax legislation that doesn’t put it under the spotlight of tax avoidance.

What we need is robust debate, hopefully this serves as a sign and we can be productive sooner than later.

Hi All!

This is my first blog post, and welcome!

Here I will be posting my musings and everyday life. Hopefully I make this a habit and will post regularly.

By way of introduction, I am a politics and economics student at the University of Auckland. As a result, a lot of my discussions will be on what I read on the news. I hope it won’t be inflammatory but merely my own views on situations and circumstances.

Ignore the pink colour of the blog, it doesn’t portray anything about me. Just decided to do something different online. :)