They're claiming the first of its kind report
into the economic role that property investors play in this country.
So private investors generated $24.8 billion in GDP,
which is 5.9% of the whole economy.
Sector supports 126,000 jobs.
That's about 5% of the national employment.
These are big numbers, aren't they? 4.1 billion
was spent on maintenance and improvements.
Anyway, Matt Ball is the property investors' federation
advocacy manager and is with us.
I'm living the dream.
Has it changed materially since then?
Do you think is it keeping on keeping on?
No, I don't think much has changed.
I mean, we'd like to do the study again next year
and find out and follow the ups and downs of the market.
But, you know, landlords are still out there doing the work
providing homes for Kiwis.
Why hasn't anyone crunched these numbers before?
I mean, I guess as the peak body for property investors
and landlords, we're the body that should do it.
I'm sort of doing this before.
The reason that we sort of doing this now
is that there's a narrative out there
that landlords are unproductive speculators,
that we sort of buy and sell houses like Monopoly
and just make money off that.
And don't do anything else.
Now, if you go round to a property investor association,
meeting new people and underpaint this land of overalls
and covered in plastic,
you know that work happens.
And we just wanted to quantify that
and make it real for people to understand
the work that goes into providing homes for people to live in.
How specific are the jobs that you talk about
therefore the economic outflow?
The property is, you know, in other words,
the house has certain things attached
to it no matter who owns it, you know what I mean?
Look, there is a property sector.
There's a rental property sector.
And we were just looking at the work that goes into providing that.
I mean, you could theoretically say
if 100% of the homes were owner occupied,
similar work would happen.
Some things would be different.
You don't need a property manager for your own home.
But this just quantifies all of the activity
that goes into providing rental properties.
The ones that have been done up before.
And not having these numbers
is actually damaging to the sector.
It leads to bad policy.
And bad policy leads to bad outcomes.
So we're trying to change the game here,
put some facts into the debate.
And it lets come into good policy
for the rental sector and for the housing market.
Appreciate your time.
Apologies for the quality of the line.
Matt Ball, who's with the property.
By the way, very good reading and look it up.
It was written in one roof the other day.
First home buyers are back 27% of the market.
That's a record high for the group.
There are three key things they were arguing
as to what was happening in property at the moment.
First home buyers are back record share at 27%.
Mortgage multiple property owners.
They're back in a fairly big way.
Mortgage interest rate deductions are being claimed once again.
So that's good government policy.
So that encourages people to invest.
Lower mortgage rates are reducing the size of any cash flow.
Top ups, of course, as well.
And then what they call move is,
which I hadn't really thought about.
These are people who are just buying and selling
that they make up in any market.
They've been down a little bit as a percentage of the market
in the last couple of years,
but they are back on the move.
And that has a flow on effect.
So insurers, new and change policies.
Retailers, new big ticket purchases.
When you buy a new house, you buy a new sofa.
Value is mortgage advisors.
There's more activity, of course.
So they think that's pretty good.
Lending is on the rise as well.
There's more money out there in the market at the moment.
And there might be 10,000 or more properties
changing hands this year than last.
So it's a bigger pie.
So things are moving in the property market.
So overall, it looks moderately positive.
Shall we call it that moderately positive?