Triple purpose, Canterbury Area Road Trip.
Canterbury Road Tripping
Month: October 2020
Reduction of LVR on Investment property questioned
In my mind, the Loan to Value ratios (LVR) for investment properties should have never been reduced by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand from 35% to 20% and I struggle to understand why it has.
Will probably now join the investing hordes in this Property pile up owing to a decade of a dearth of any real investment opportunities. There’s only one or two areas in the South Island of NZ which I feel still presents value, every other area in NZ has gone full euphoric FOMO. May be the continuous money pump will never turn off (or won’t turn off for the foreseeable future) and the pull back of global asset bubbles may not eventuate in any significant sustained scary way. No one knows.
Seems to be also a lot easier today to get pre-approved for a loan in New Zealand than it was say a few years ago, the banks appear to be willingly to lend more (In my view, a jaw dropping and gobsmackingly lot more) and going through the process earlier this week does perhaps make it easier to understand why the Housing Market bubble refuses to burst and instead continues to inflate.
Again, the only risk factors to the asset markets on the radar is food security (which appears to have receded recently) and Civil Unrest which appears to be subjectively growing around the world, but still appears to be relatively benign (not raucous enough to enact any real change). Seems with all other threats the Central banks seem to be able to just add a few zeros at the end of the Global Money supply and “she’ll be right”. But who the flip knows…?
The NRMA and NRMA Insurance are not the same company
Be aware that NRMA Insurance and NRMA Motoring and services (“The NRMA”) are NOT the same company and have been separate entities since 2000 despite the two companies sharing the same brand. Yes, indeed this is confusing as anything whereby even Australians to this day do not even realise the distinction.
I occasionally observe NRMA clients complain about an acrimonious experience on either the insurance or roadside assistance side, mentioned they’ve been members for years or decades, and then state they will now move both their insurance policies and roadside assistance to another provider as retribution.
NRMA Insurance and more recently, NRMA Motorserve (now rebranded simply to “Motorserve”) are actually owned by Insurance Australia Group (IAG).
“The NRMA” (Motoring and Services) have largely evolved in my mind to be more of a travel and tourism company. Their traditional roadside assistance services appear to be increasingly supplied by another, separate company called ClubAssist whose personnel (staff and contractors) are supplied with NRMA branded Vehicles and Uniforms while actually being employed by Club-Assist.