Website: The best of the Internet for investors

Twenty-first century property investors have more information at their fingertips than any previous generations. Thanks to the Internet, it’s possible to do much of your due diligence on a property purchase without even leaving the comfort of your home or office.

Once the preserve of professionals only, vast swathes of data and information is available to anyone willing to do a bit of online sleuthing.

Statistics/information:

Infometrics Property

Infometrics Property is a goldmine for investors. It collates data from all sorts of sources such as Statistics New Zealand, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ), Quotable Value (QV), and the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ). It costs AUD$30 for three months or AUD$85 for 12 months.

As well as statistics, Infometrics Property also provides articles from its economists, interpreting economic data such as the RBNZ monetary policy statements. Other subjects of importance to landlords on this website include: home ownership and ethnicity, or how the house price riddle has proved forecasters wrong.

It has to be said that much of the data on Infometrics Property is available free elsewhere. What you’re paying for is having the data presented in a consistent, digestible format.


Quotable Value

Data, data, data. QV’s website is a must for anyone who doesn’t know their market like the back of their hand.

With a few clicks of the mouse, QV allows you to find out:
· Records of property sales and previous capital values
· Information by address, valuation reference number, local authority or region
· Listings of properties by comparative characteristics, such as size, capital value, property category, sales dates, and more
· Floor area, construction type, property category, land area, capital value, local authority or regional council
· Demographic reports.


Terranet

Like QV, Terranet provides invaluable reports for property buyers. Some are free, other cost – mostly less than $10, which is small change if the data leads to a better purchase. The guts of Terranet are four databases containing:
1. Detailed valuation and sales data
2. An ownership register
3. Aerial imaging
4. Building consents.
By far the most popular reports are the sales and valuation reports. They give you a property’s rateable value and its sales history since 1995. These reports cost $2.50 each plus GST. If you’re concerned about that room tacked on the back of a property you can order a Building Consents Report for the property in question. Or if you want to extend a property you might find it useful to get a Building Consents Issued In A Street Report. Some of the free reports are mighty useful. For example you can get quick access to school enrolment zones information.

Real Estate Institute of New Zealand

This website from the real estate agents’ professional body has a variety of useful information such as:
· latest real estate news
· trends in the property market
· market facts graphs
· residential rent review statistics
· Massey University Property surveys
· AMP Home Affordability reports
· tips on buying or selling property.

Property Insight

This site offers a detailed hazard report on your property. It includes some free advice about how to minimise the impact of hazards.

RPNZReports

We haven’t yet reviewed this offshoot of an Australian website. It says it provides detailed property and suburb reports, free district profiles and more.

Whatpricemyhouse

Whatpricemyhouse provides free comparable house prices over the net. It involves you filling in a form and then (allegedly) receiving a reply within 48 hours via email. Our reply didn’t come within the 48 hours.

Government websites:

Department of Building and Housing (Tenancy Services)

This website aims to offer useful advice and information for landlords and tenants who rent their homes. It has sections about building, weather tightness, tenancy, and information, trends and data in New Zealand’s building and housing environment.
Perhaps the best used section is the tenancy section, which includes downloads and useful information such as:
· Market rental prices, recorded from bonds
· Rules and regulations
· A landlord’s introduction to the law
· Details of the Residential Tenancies Act in plain English
· Mediation and Tenancy Tribunal information
· Useful question and answer page
· Links to organisations of use to landlords
· Details of upcoming landlord education seminars.

Statistics New Zealand

This website is a veritable mine of information about New Zealand and its people. Investors could spend many hours searching this website. For example, the New Zealand Property Magazine searched the term: “Huntly” and found detailed statistics on population, age profile, education, ethnic groups, income, employment, families, households and businesses. For example we found that the median income at the 2001 Census was $13,400 compared to $18,500 – perhaps indicating that paying the rent might be a problem, the population was over 40% Maori, compared with a New Zealand average of less than 20%, and the unemployment rate was 17.1%, compared to 7.5% for the whole of New Zealand, and 32.7% were one parent families compared with 18.9% nationwide.

It’s also possible to find out the number of dwellings, dwelling type, percentage of owner occupiers and so forth for an urban area such as Huntly. You can find out data reporting from courts such as burglaries, drug offences, and even offences under the Dog Control Act. There are also population projections – useful indeed for a property investor. Much of the information is free. But from time to time you will need to pay for this – such as the area unit population projections.

Housing New Zealand

Housing New Zealand’s website has some useful research on it. There is also a basic introduction to the guaranteed rent through home leasing scheme where the HNZC manages rental properties on behalf of landlords.

Reserve Bank NZ

The RBNZ’s website, like that of Statistics New Zealand, is a behemoth of data and information. For those investors who follow the economy closely, it’s an absolute must. It has data on everything from the CPI inflation calculator, interest rates, recent monetary policy statements, and variable first mortgage interest rates – right back to 1964, and building permit issues to 1994. Investors might also find the current financial stability reports interesting as well as the key graphs. Search the words “property investment” and a number of interesting links come up. One, dating back to 1998, was a speech by the then governor of the Reserve Bank, Don Brash, about why the reserve bank wasn’t against property investment.