May 7, 2025 • 33 mins
After recent rockiness in both equity and housing markets, we revisit the classic shares vs. property discussion with Ed McKnight, Resident Economist at Opes Partners.
While he believes there’s a “buyer’s market”, Ed cautions that housing might be riskier than you think, and that leverage can amplify your losses as well as your returns.
Is Ed worried about the impacts of climate and insurability for property investors? What makes a property rentable in 2025? How does our lower birth rate affect demand for different types of housing?
And with New Zealand close to a 10-year high in property listings, Ed shares how Opes Partners identifies undervalued growth areas (like Christchurch in the pre-covid era).
For more or to watch on YouTube—check out http://linktr.ee/sharedlunch
Shared Lunch is brought to you by Sharesies Australia Limited (ABN 94 648 811 830; AFSL 529893) in Australia and Sharesies Limited (NZ) in New Zealand. It is not financial advice. Information provided is general only and current at the time it’s provided, and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation and needs. We do not provide recommendations and you should always read the disclosure documents available from the product issuer before making a financial decision. Our disclosure documents and terms and conditions—including a Target Market Determination and IDPS Guide for Sharesies Australian customers—can be found on our relevant Australian or NZ website.
Investing involves risk. You might lose the money you start with. If you require financial advice, you should consider speaking with a qualified financial advisor. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Curt Koto, Welcome to Shared Lunch. I'm Garth Bray. A
lot of you are investing for the long term, and
so at some point the question arises, what about investment properties?
To answer that question, we've tagged in another expert from
a highly visible podcast, the Property Academy, who spends a
lot of his time thinking about exactly these issues. It's
Ed Bigknight from Opus Partners. Before we get to him,
(00:27):
some important information that you always need to consider it
before investing.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Investing involves for risk you might lose the money you
start with. We recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor.
We also recommend reading product disclosure documents before deciding to invest.
Everything you're about to see and here is current at
the time of recording.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Ed welcome, more than two thousand podcasts under your belt.
Is that a black belt then, ic you?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Well, so, I'm just so grateful that so many people
want to nerd out about property for so many thousands
of episodes. But yeah, we've done it every single day
for over five years.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
What is maintaining that sort of consistency?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Like, well, the beautiful thing is so many people email
in questions and it's quite humbling that people will literally
write their entire financial lives in an email, send it
to myself and Andrew, random strangers effectively on the internet
and say hey, can I have your opinion? Can you
talk about this on a podcast that thousands of people
listen to? And so we're very grateful to have that
(01:26):
kind of community engagement. If we didn't have that, maybe
we would have wrapped up after ninety days, But here
we are over five years later.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
So I'm interested because you've taken a big bolt step.
As I understand, in the last couple of weeks, you
announced that you'd spent over one hundred thousand dollars of
the company's money on building an AI client. How do
you know if that's worth it?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I mean, who knows? But you make big bets and business.
So what I really want to do is answer people's questions.
And one of the big questions that investors often ask is, well,
how many properties can I buy? Starting out? I've owned
my own house for a while, I've paid off a
bit of the mortgage. How many properties might I be
able to purchase over the next fifteen years? Because people
just want to get a sense of where could they go?
(02:10):
And so I thought okay, we could probably answer that.
And so what we spent one hundred grand doing was
we tried to recreate all of the bank's internal calculators
that say whether you get a mortgage or not, and say, okay,
could we project that into the future and say, wherever
you are right now, if your income goes up and
if you keep paying off your mortgage, how many properties
(02:31):
could you potentially buy? But then the real issue there
is once you start doing that, I realized there were
like hundreds of thousands of different scenarios you could run
with the spreadsheets, So how do you find the right
one for you? And so that's where we started building
an AI trained it on this model so that it
can spit out, okay, what property should you buy and
(02:52):
in what order. We're only using that with our financial
advisors at the moment, so that if a client came
in it's like, yeah, I want to use that. We've
got to make sure there's a person checking all of that.
But we have released a public AI chatbot as well,
called Opah's AI, where people can ask any question, a
bit like chat GPT, but it's just been trained on
the hundreds We've written over five hundred articles about property
(03:16):
investing over the last five years, so it's been trained
all on that. One thing that's really interesting that you
won't be able to see though from the public view,
is what people are typing in Now. I've had a
look because I want to know what are people asking
a property AI when you know they're just at home
at two am in the morning typing stuff in and
(03:37):
people write their life stories in there and say I
have this much income, my mortgages this much, how many
properties can I buy? Where should I buy? And what
that showed to me is that there is a real
need for advice, whether it's in shares or property in
New Zealand because people have these questions and previously they
would have gone to Google. Now they're going to be
(03:57):
going to AI. So I'm really to be in this
position where we've created this AI, people are trusting it
enough to write in their live stories and now we
can kind of guide this AI to try and give
good answers in a New Zealand context rather than an
American context. Because usually you talk to an AI and
it's coming from an American based perspective.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
That's a huge amount of information for people to be imparting.
I guess you've got some pretty good safeguards in there
for how you look after that data and how you
use it.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Well, you've got to make sure that you know, not
everybody in the company can access that. That's usually me
looking through as a director of the company to make
sure that when people are typing that stuff and we
are protecting that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Right. I actually did ask your Opah's AI a question.
I said, Look, if we're talking about investments, why is
buying an investment property better in the long term than
investing in the US s and P five hundred?
Speaker 3 (04:51):
What did it say?
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I want to know what you think it said first,
because you've worked this thing through thoroughly and I'm just
a punter, right, Okay, Probably a difference between what I
think it said and what I would say.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Okay, So I'm sure that it probably talked about the
pros and cons. It probably said that shares were higher
risk but ultimately higher return. If it got really advanced,
it might have talked about the impact of debt as well,
and how if you buy properties with debt, that can
make your returns bigger, but it can also make your
losses bigger. Yeah, but what did it say.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
We're pretty good, You're right. I think it's sort of
talked a lot about leverage, and I think that's probably
a good place for us to dive in and say
when you're thinking about investing. A lot of people say
property investing is a way to go, but it's based
on leverage and on taking quite a big risk. If
the value drops, you've effectively lost your entire investment, Whereas
(05:45):
whether shareholding, obviously the gains might be lower, but the
losses tend to be a little bit lower. So I
guess there's probably a bit of a chance there for
people to get both sides of the story if they
look into it and some death. But on that idea
of leverage, talk to me a little bit about that
in property investment at the moment and whether it's a
good time to be leveraged.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yeah, I think the thing in New Zealand was always
considered property to be quite safe, and I think that's
really mischaracterized property because property is actually pretty high risk,
higher return. But when we typically think about property over
the last kind of twenty five a year, so since
nineteen ninety six, the average property increase in New Zealand
(06:27):
has been about six point three percent, and for shares
it's been eight point six percent. So shares have been
higher return, and that's where a lot of people start
by saying cool shares higher return. But then we've also
got to think about risk. Now, when we think about
risk and investment circles, often we're talking about like the
ups and the downs, and so we see that with
shares that you do have some pretty high ups, you
(06:48):
also have some pretty high downs. So if we think
about the best year in the S and P five
hundred since Google Finance started reporting the S and P
five hundred and nineteen ninety six, the best year has
been about fifty four percent up. Great year if you
timed that. The worst year has been down forty five percent.
So shares higher return, but bigger ups and downs. The
(07:08):
worst year and property has been quite recent It was
about fifteen percent down and best has been thirty percent up.
So typically this is the way we think about property
versus shares in New Zealand that cool shares higher return
but also a bit higher risk. But what that conversation
misses is the leverage part. So let's run through those numbers,
(07:29):
because we always think that when you add debt to
an investment, whether it's property or a business, whatever your
asset happens to be. That is going to make the
returns larger, but it's going to make the down side
much larger as well. I call it the mortgage magnifier,
just because I love my alliterations. Mate, who doesn't. So
let's say you're buying a five hundred thousand dollar property.
(07:51):
You put one hundred thousand dollars worth of cash in,
and we've got four hundred k worth of debt. Now,
if that property goes up by five percent, that property
is no longer worth five hundred thousand. It's worth five
hundred and twenty five thousand. Now most people be like, oh, okay, yeah,
that sounds about right. But what that means is that
your equity within that property has gone from one hundred
grand to one hundred and twenty five grand. So yep,
(08:15):
the market went up by five percent, your house went
up by five percent, but your equity within that property
went up by twenty five percent. Now that sounds pretty good,
but we've got to talk about the downside as well.
What happens if it goes the other way. If that
house goes from five hundred k drops by five percent
to full seventy five, you've now lost twenty five thousand
dollars and you're down twenty five percent.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
And we are seeing that at the moment in some markets,
aren't we We are seeing values in some respects kind
of dropping backwards in places, or valuations not kind of
coming in where they were originally put out. So that's
a real risk.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Yeah, the market's starting to smooth out quite a lot,
but it's actually even worse than than what you've made
it out to be. You know, in Lower Hut at
the largest peak to trough drop, property prices were down
like thirty percent. And so the reason that those property
drops hurt isn't just the fact that you've lost thirty
percent on your investment. It's that if you put in
a twenty percent deposit and your property value dropped by
(09:11):
thirty percent, you're now in negative equity. Your return on
the money you put in is negative one hundred and
fifty percent, because you're getting five times if you put
in a twenty percent deposit, you put in a fifth
of the money, you're getting five times the market return.
And so typically we think of New Zealand property little
bit lower risk, a little bit lower return, but an
(09:32):
actual fact, if you're using debt, it's much higher risk
and much higher return than shares. And that's the thing
that I think people miss. And I'm not really trying
to emphasize the higher returns here. I'm trying to emphasize
the higher risk when we take on debt, because that's
the thing a lot of people forget about.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Sure, I mean, and that's it's great that I guess
the AI spat that out is the kind of the
number one thing to address. I just want to talk
as well a little bit about some of the other
aspects that talks about about how property is a tangible
asset for a lot of people, it's a huge attraction.
But of course, anything you can't pick up and move,
anything you can't sell quickly, it makes it a little
bit less liquid. It's harder to get out of that
(10:09):
position if you can see a problem coming. So is
that another thing that people really need to consider it
with property?
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Well, it kind of depends on who you are. You see.
For me myself, I don't care that property is bricks
and mortar. To me, that's not a huge pro But
I hear from a lot of people that they like it.
They like that they can drive past the property, they
can see it. If they needed two in fifteen years time,
they could do it up, improve its value and sell it.
(10:36):
And so some key weis really value that side of
property and they say, big pro for me is that
it's tangible. Me myself, I don't care so much about that.
But for some people it's a big pro.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, okay, And that idea of a less liquid market,
lesser ability to sort of liquid eight things. Potentially that's
not necessarily sort of a big problem from the people
that you're seeing.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Oh well, for some people that has a big issue. Yeah,
especially because when you buy a property and you go
to sell it, the average days to sell might be
like forty five days, or it might take thirty days
to sell a property. But by the time you talk
to a real estate age and by the time you
get somebody to say yes, I'm going to buy your
property and then they pay you the money, it's more
like three months. So it can take easily three to
(11:19):
six months for you to say cool, I'm going to
list this property to eventually sell it. Now, that's probably
one of the reasons why it works, really well as
a long term store of value or for a long
term investment. But the big pro I see around that
is that people don't look at their property values every
single day. I think this is another one of the
reasons why people think that shares is more risky than property,
(11:42):
because they look at the value where they look at
their key we save every single day, and they see
it going up and down, and that scares them. To me,
that's not something to be too scared about. The reason
that you look at property and you think it's safer
quote unquote is because the value on homes not codd
n Z only updates every two weeks, or you're only
looking at your bank ap once a month and it
(12:03):
updates the property value, so it appears to be less volatile,
but simply because it's a more I liquid asset. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Right, So, what are some of the market specifics that
you think are important to consider right now in terms
of availability of property, in terms of prices and so on.
I mean, it's a pretty broad question, but it feels
to me like that's an entire section that we can
talk about here.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yes, there are two main things that I'm really interested
at the moment. The first thing that gets me really
excited is that there is a huge number of listings
on the market. You go on trade, we are one
roof for real estate, dot coded and Z. At the moment,
there's like over thirty thousand properties currently available. It's basically
at a ten year high. And so as an investor,
that gets me quite excited because there's a lot of
choice out there. It is a buyer's market rather than
(12:48):
a sales market. One thing that's just as a bit
of a sign about this, it's really interesting that a
lot of people seem to be quite scared of buyers markets.
They see that property prices are kind of going sowards
at the moment, especially over the last six months, seasonally
adjusted house prices have basically been flat, and some people say, oh,
that's really scary. I'm not sure if it's a good
(13:09):
time to buy. Holl Tho, it's a great time to buy.
It's a buyers market, heaps a choice out there. But
the thing that I really care about when I'm thinking
about where am I going to invest is I always
try and judge, well, what might be the next market
to take off. So I'll give you an example of
that back in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, christ Church property
prices were very flat and had been flat for a
(13:31):
long time. But what we were tracking was, well, how
expensive is christ Church compared to the rest of the
country and compared to where we would expect it to be.
And what we thought was christ Church is looking really
cheap right now. We directed a lot of our investors
to start buying in christ Church, and over the last
couple of years, crash Church property prices are up fifty
percent and they didn't really tank that much during the
(13:52):
downturn because Crasschach was still relatively cheap compared to the
rest of the country. So I call it this overvalued
undervalued model. Data is free on our website. We calculate
it for every council area and every region in the country.
And that's one of the main things I'm trying to
look at, which is basically saying, is a particular area
relatively cheap or relatively expensive compared to where we'd expected
(14:13):
to be, because that kind of gives us a good
indication about which areas might take off next.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
And I guess you've seen the market adjust to that
because now we've effectively got I mean a glut of
properties there in christ Church, haven't we It's an area
that so we're lead to believe there's a lot available.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Well, there's a lot of properties that have been built,
but there is a very large difference between the number
of properties that have been built and a glut. To me,
a glut, what does that look like? That looks like
you can't rent a property. Actually, our property management team
are renting properties pretty quickly in christ Church, much quicker
than Auckland, so we're not necessarily seeing that. I think
(14:49):
what we are seeing in New Zealand is that we
are our housing stock is changing because the makeup of
the country is changing. So if I took you back
the seventies or eighties, your standard house was kind of
three bedrooms one bathroom. Now people are having fewer kids,
we've got fewer people living in each house and so
(15:10):
we don't need as many bedrooms. But there's this move
to kind of compact quality where even though we don't
need as many bedrooms, we have higher expectations around what
our house is going to give us. That's why more
people want two bathrooms within a property as opposed to
just the one that we would have had previously. So
I think there is a change in the expectations of
(15:31):
kiwis and therefore we're seeing a change in the housing stock.
That's why you see a lot of building. I don't
necessarily say look at that and say that's a supply issue,
because some of it is demand driven.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
In terms of diversification, if we're thinking still back to
that same idea that we started in with, which is
why would I put my money into a house rather
than into an equity investment. You could spread your bets
a lot more easily, can't you if you are putting
money into a market, Whereas if you are investing in
anyone property that you're locked up, you're exposed to climate risk,
(16:02):
rental risk, all of these other kinds of issues. You
never can pick your neighbors, how I mean, is there
any way around that problem.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
One thing that's really interesting when we're thinking about diversification
is those numbers I shared before about S and P
five hundred versus zed house prices, the inset house price
index or medium sale price, whatever graph you look at
online is a little bit misleading because if you invest
in the S and P five hundred, you can put
your hundred bucks in and you can become reasonably diversified
(16:32):
buying up all five hundred of those stocks, and so
the ups and downs can be smoothed out because you
are being diversified. Now when you buy an investment property,
you're not buying the average house in New Zealand. You're
not going to go up and down with the market.
You're buying one specific property in one specific area that
is basically not diversified at all, and so the ups
(16:55):
and downs that you get as a property investor will
be much larger than the ones that you see when
you google median sale price in z for houses, or
look at any graph of NZED house prices and it
will look like, oh, most of the time house prices
are going up, yes, but that's because sometimes Auckland will
be going up in value, when Wellington's flat. Sometimes christ
(17:17):
Church will be going up in value well and the
Cargol is flat, and so it will look as if
New Zealand house prices are going up constantly, but you're
not buying in for Cargol and christ Church and Auckland
and Wellington. When you buy your first property, you're just
buying one specific property and one specific market, and so
the value increase will be much more volatile than the
(17:37):
overall market. And that's a nerdy point, but it's a
very important one to get across.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
You know. I guess it's like there is no average
houses there, right, that's the that's the thing, right, It's
very very specific. It's a very bespoke kind of investment
in that kind of respect. I guess that appeals a
lot to some people, but to some others that might
there might be some pressures on there they might be understanding. Gosh,
I'm now on for a bunch of maintenance. You know,
the rates bills going nuts. We've touched on climate there.
(18:04):
I mean, we're getting some quite granular assessments from the
insurance companies about whether they'll even extend cover over properties
and so on. I mean, are you finding that from
the people that open as you talk to the customers
coming through the door, that that to turn off or
something that they have to try and get over. Are
people stepping back as a result of that, or how
are you helping them deal with some of those challenges.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Well, one of the main things we do at Opus
Partners is we only focus on new built investment properties
and so let me give you an example, if you
bought an older property that was built in the nineteen
seventies and that property is now on a floodplane, chances
are that property is built quite low to the ground
and will have a reasonable risk of flooding. For a
property to be built on a floodplane, if it's a
(18:44):
new build today, it has to be built up off
the ground. You'll often see when you're looking at townhouses
they might have steps up to them. Typically it might
need to be about half a meter off the ground.
And so these properties are built to withstand typically a
one in two hundred year flood. And so that is
one of the the kind of risk mitigations for our
clients and one of the reasons why they kind of
prefer new builds because they've got to be built to
(19:06):
the current building code. That doesn't mean that new builds
are right for everybody. You don't brand new properties, but
some people prefer them.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Companies like yours do have a relationship with developers as well.
That's I mean you ten out of ten for plain
language you're talking about you don't have to pay us
because the developer is paying us, and that, I guess
then creates a relationship risk there as well. You know,
am I being looked after as the developing being looked after?
How do you navigate that situation?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Well, there's a couple of ways you do it. The
first thing is we split our company in two. So
we've got a property company, OPA's Property, and then we've
got an investment company which is OPA's Partners. And effectively
these two companies are separate, but they serve different clients.
So effectively OPA's Partners, which gives financial advice, our only
client is the person who wants to get advice OPA's Property.
(19:55):
They specifically focus on the developers. So the first thing
by splitting our company in two and saying this is
who you serve, this is who you serve, that kind
of puts a really nice line in the sand practically
for our staff members to say, this is what you
care about, this is what you care about. The other
thing that we mainly do is when somebody buys a
property through us, the commission or the fee that we
(20:16):
get is flat. So what I mean by that is
if you come to us and you buy a nine
hundred thousand dollar property or a six hundred thousand dollar property,
the fee that we get is always the same. It's
quite funny. I had somebody messaged me once and they said, look,
I understand that I'm not incentivized to buy a more
expensive property through you, but isn't your incentive for me
(20:37):
to then buy two cheaper properties? And I was like, oh,
and trying to solve this like one incentive to say, hey,
we don't necessarily want you to buy a more expensive
property if it's not right for you, We've inavertently created
another buyas. But I think the main thing you've got
to do is Kiwis are smart.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Kiwis have like this really good bull crap detector, and
so we like to be upfront and honest and put
it out there. One thing that we did was I
completely re wrote our disclosure statements online. So if you
go onto any investment company's website, whether it's like Milford
or Craig's Investment Partners Ask or somebody else, they have
to have like very important legal information online about how
(21:16):
their company is structured, how they get paid in all
of that jazz and I was on Reddit once, the
cispit of the Internet, and I saw that somebody had
linked it and I was like, oh, wow, people will
read this. And so what I did is I went
back and I said to our compliance saying, hey, this
is all in legal jargon. Let's make this plain English.
(21:37):
Let's explain how all of our companies work so that
people can say, well, okay, maybe I do want the
free advice. I understand their commercial biases, but they are
upfront about it, and I trust myself enough to detect
if they're doing me wrong or not. And so I
went away and I wrote that in plain English, you
wouldn't believe it. People create accounts and write comments on
(21:58):
our legal disclosure statements say thank you for the transparency.
This is really interesting. I'm looking forward to our meeting
and things like that. It's actually really amazing. Kiwis are smart,
and I think if you put the information out there
and say these are all of our biases, this is
where we're coming from, but this is what we offer,
it's up to you to make the decision. I think
people are pretty open to that.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
So this is why you sort of front footed this
as well. I think one of your podcasts and explain, hey,
here are some of the common criticisms people have of
people in our industry, and let me tell you about
it was that part of that same journey.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
I did another video where I went through Reddit comments
with complaints about both my company, OPA's partners and all
of our competitors as well. And so what our philosophy
is is, well, we should try and tell you about
as many of those bad things upfront, so that you
know about them, so you know what you're getting into,
and then investors can make the right decision for them.
(22:50):
I think all companies should do this. I think there
is this sense that, oh, but if I say the
bad things about my company, then people won't want to
use me. Well, actually, I think that a company like
Craig's Investment Partners or Milford should say, this is how
many of our customers have lost money over the last year,
this is how many of our customers don't make the
(23:11):
benchmark return over x period. Because then people can make
their own informed decision. And I suppose that's one of
the reasons why we leaned real heavy into the risks.
At the start of this conversation.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
You're inviting me to ask how many of your customers
lost Oh.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Do you know what, I don't have that exact number,
but if they purchased in twenty twenty one or twenty
twenty two. I can guarantee it as almost all of them,
because the market has been really, really bad. And in fact,
one thing that's hard to see within property investment is
how your property has performed compared to the market. So
I ended up making this really cool tool called the
(23:47):
Market Mover Calculator. You can google it and find it
and you can put your property value in whatever you
purchased it for, and it will show you if it
followed the market perfectly in your local area, what would
it be worth today? And that lets you see in
a way that I've never been able to get across
to people, well, how is your property doing or performing
compared to the overall market.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
We were talking about developers and so on, and you've
been great and open about the relationship. Are you looking
at what they are doing and are they talking to you?
Are they talking to you about how they raise their money,
or are they talking to you about the kind of
ventures that they want to undertake, So that there's a
bit of a conversation there about, hey, we see a
trend for smaller but higher value stuff, or there's interest
(24:31):
in investing in these kind of things To build as well.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Is there that kind of conversation. Well, there has to be,
isn't it. Because the beautiful thing about how we're set
up at Open's Partners is we've also got a property
management team. So not only might somebody choose to say, oh,
I'm going to buy a property through you, guys, I
might even get your mortgage through you, but I'm going
to get the tenants as well. And that means that
we see all of the problems that happen specifically like
(24:56):
what sort of properties might attract poor equality tenants. So
there's a big trend at the moment for developers to
build studios because they are very profitable, and also you
can sell them at a low price. So I'm talking
about like buying a four hundred thousand dollars or three
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, like very small apartment. Now
that would be very easy to say to invest is
(25:16):
this is a great deal, But the tenants are usually
very very bad. And the reason is because you tend
to attract tenants who are quite transitory, and so you've
got a lot of moving in moving out. And so
one of the big things we do is talk to
our property managers and say, what's renting really? Well, what
problems do you have with how developers are building properties.
I'll tell you a little story like that's so kind
(25:38):
of obvious. There was a property that one of our
property managers were trying to rent out and there was
a problem with the pantry that this developer hadn't built
a decent enough sized pantry and all of your food
was going to be stored above the sinks. And they said,
this is a real problem, like people are being turned
off by this. So you bet that we then go
back to the developers and say, well, we can't exit.
(26:00):
We need to have really good pantries, or we need
to make sure that the bedrooms are this size. And
so there's this conversation about what's happening in the market
and feeding that back to developers. It's really about saying, hey,
can you build the right investments so that it's going
to be the right fit for our clients.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
I'm just thinking as well, the government's really shaken up
some legislation lately. This is probably more about offshore investors,
but I'm wondering whether there's an impact on how New
Zealand investors could be affected by this, they've opened up
the playing field so that it's easier for foreign investors
to invest in build to rent properties. They've got to
be a certain size I think more than twenty dwellings
and that I don't know whether we're seeing much action
(26:40):
or a response to that in the market. But are
you seeing more of those coming onstream or down the tracks?
And is that an opportunity that New Zealanders might increasingly
take up and increasingly would that shut the door on
other kinds of developments potentially? Is it going to direct
that capital away?
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Well, it's a really interesting question because that law change
only happened in February this year, and it's not that
it's a free for all where overseas investors can come
and buy up these properties that have twenty or more dwellings.
They've still got to go through a consent process, but
it's a fast trained consent process. Personally, I haven't seen
any evidence that there has been a rush of overseas
(27:17):
investors designed to come in. But what I would say
is that the build to rent sector, where a company
comes out simplicity, is a really good example of this.
At the moment they say we're going to build these
big apartment blocks and we are going to rent them
out long term. To be honest, I feel quite excited
about that because that is a way, especially if you're
more of a yield based investor, that you might be
able to get access to property without having to personally
(27:39):
take on that debt, which is one of those big risks.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
So there's an option there, but it's not a space
that you.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Play in, not personally. But I'm very interested in seeing
how it goes, especially once we open it up to overseas.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Capital Financial Markets Authority. They are in court, i think
last week in the High Court trying to get a
definition of something called we're getting very pointy headed here
the wholesale investor eligibility, which if people have been following it,
they might know it more from some of the big
property development companies that got into a bit of trouble
a couple of years ago. But this is basically saying,
if you are not a mum and dad investor, not
(28:11):
a retail investor that is looking at something with a
product disclosure statement, you're a wholesale investor, you're rich, or
you're particularly over a certain level of wealth, you can
take a higher risk and you can be into these
higher risk investments. And that's how a lot of property
companies were accessing capital I guess in the short run
before they go to the bank, so they could purchase
(28:32):
land or carry people through the time while they were
building and so on. I mean tightening that sort of
stuff up, is that going to change the dynamic? Is
that what you're hearing as well, or what are your
thoughts there?
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Well, I'm quite excited that the Financial Markets Authority is
trying to clear that up because what is alleged to
have happened is that you might get a mum and
dad investor who sold their farm or sold their house
and now they're cashed up. Then they're scrolling through Facebook
or Instagram and they and add ten percent guaranteed return
and they think that sounds quite low risk. I'm going
(29:06):
to click on that, and then they get a salesperson
on the phone saying, hey, yeah, come and invest it
with us. Now, this is where there is this big
loophole which really needs to close. Even if you weren't
what's called a wholesale investor, where you were a financial advisor,
you were over a certain level of wealth, you could
go across to your financial advisor or your lawyer or
(29:28):
your accountant, and you could self certify that yes, I
understand all of these risks, Can you sign me off,
and I'm going to go invest in that. And the
risk is that people started investing in assets and funds
that were far too risky for them, and that this
loophole was being misused. Now there is a place for it,
(29:49):
but it's not in getting mom and dad investors to
put their money into developer funds, because that is entirely
risk and we saw that with both Duval and with
Black Robin, where people had put their money in and
they thought it was safe, and now they're not able
to get it out and it is incredibly sad, and
so tightening that up is going to be really good.
I'm encouraging developers to work with the finance companies that
(30:11):
are already out there because you can get access to capital.
What some developers are trying to do, and we're trying
to do and are trying to do, is say, well,
can we raise our own for the average investor that
is too risky and they shouldn't be able to do it.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
It's been a really great talking with you and I
wondered if we could think about finishing with a look ahead,
really a long way ahead, when nearing a point in history.
I suppose where you know, some New Zealanders may be
in a fortunate position where they inherit a share of
a property that their parents purchased in a time when
(30:45):
obviously the interest rates and someone were different, but they've
enjoyed substantial capital gain over that period, and so there's
almost like a generational wealth transfer coming. What does that
mean for the market you're in, for the people that
you're talking to and the choices that they're having to make.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
The people that tend to come and work with Opus
partners tend to be better off financially because you if
you're going to buy an investment property, you've got to
have some income behind you and you've got to have
some wealth behind you. So for your question was very
specifically about the clients that we work with, they're going
to be made better off for this. The people I
(31:24):
worry about other people who are not our clients, and
because the people who tend to go and get financial
advice in New Zealand are those people who have money,
because that is who the industry is set up for
you know, it's very hard to make money as a
business if you're giving advice to people who don't have
a lot of money, right, and so you don't see
and to see as many for profit businesses playing in
(31:45):
that space. But that's who I worry more about, because
those are the sorts of people that aren't going to
have that intergenerational wealth, whose parents perhaps weren't able to
purchase a property many many years ago, and it makes
it so much harder to retire well or to say cool,
I've now got the money where I'm able to buy
a home to live in for myself and grow my wealth.
So that's one of going to be one of the
(32:05):
big questions of our time, and how we deal with that.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
I guess it's how you respond to that worry that's
as important as anything else, isn't it. How do you
address that lack or that need.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Well, I can tell you what I'm doing personally, which
is putting out thousands of podcasts and thousands of articles
about what you can do and what the options are.
We're giving a seminar, a property investment seminar down in
christ Church.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
It would have been a couple of weeks ago and
afterwards a couple of eighteen year olds came up and
they said, hey, look, we don't have rich parents, but
we want to make money through property. We loved your presentation.
Should we buy a new build off here? The answer
was no, No, you absolutely should not. Because you're eighteen
years old and you've got more time than money. You
(32:45):
should start going out or Our advice was think about
going out and flipping properties, something that we don't work with.
That's sort of strategy we help people use at Opus Partners,
but it's something that for these people, that is the
way we can help you move forward as say, well,
this is the strategy that would best suit your situation
right now, go away and think about it, and yeah,
pull your deposits together. See if you're able to start
(33:07):
doing that to move forward. So it's a tough question.
I don't know what the government should do, but I
know what I'm going to do about it because that's
all I can focus on, which is continuing to put
out content that hopefully helps New Zealanders.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
And that is a wonderful thing to share. So thank
you very much McKnight from Opah's partners, and thank you
for watching for listening Wherever you're listening, where your podcasts iHeart, Spotify,
Apple or straight off the Shares's app Kumtu. That's us
for this week.
Curt Koto, Welcome to Shared Lunch. I'm Garth Bray. A
lot of you are investing for the long term, and
so at some point the question arises, what about investment properties?
To answer that question, we've tagged in another expert from
a highly visible podcast, the Property Academy, who spends a
lot of his time thinking about exactly these issues. It's
Ed Bigknight from Opus Partners. Before we get to him,
(00:27):
some important information that you always need to consider it
before investing.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Investing involves for risk you might lose the money you
start with. We recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor.
We also recommend reading product disclosure documents before deciding to invest.
Everything you're about to see and here is current at
the time of recording.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Ed welcome, more than two thousand podcasts under your belt.
Is that a black belt then, ic you?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Well, so, I'm just so grateful that so many people
want to nerd out about property for so many thousands
of episodes. But yeah, we've done it every single day
for over five years.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
What is maintaining that sort of consistency?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Like, well, the beautiful thing is so many people email
in questions and it's quite humbling that people will literally
write their entire financial lives in an email, send it
to myself and Andrew, random strangers effectively on the internet
and say hey, can I have your opinion? Can you
talk about this on a podcast that thousands of people
listen to? And so we're very grateful to have that
(01:26):
kind of community engagement. If we didn't have that, maybe
we would have wrapped up after ninety days, But here
we are over five years later.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
So I'm interested because you've taken a big bolt step.
As I understand, in the last couple of weeks, you
announced that you'd spent over one hundred thousand dollars of
the company's money on building an AI client. How do
you know if that's worth it?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I mean, who knows? But you make big bets and business.
So what I really want to do is answer people's questions.
And one of the big questions that investors often ask is, well,
how many properties can I buy? Starting out? I've owned
my own house for a while, I've paid off a
bit of the mortgage. How many properties might I be
able to purchase over the next fifteen years? Because people
just want to get a sense of where could they go?
(02:10):
And so I thought okay, we could probably answer that.
And so what we spent one hundred grand doing was
we tried to recreate all of the bank's internal calculators
that say whether you get a mortgage or not, and say, okay,
could we project that into the future and say, wherever
you are right now, if your income goes up and
if you keep paying off your mortgage, how many properties
(02:31):
could you potentially buy? But then the real issue there
is once you start doing that, I realized there were
like hundreds of thousands of different scenarios you could run
with the spreadsheets, So how do you find the right
one for you? And so that's where we started building
an AI trained it on this model so that it
can spit out, okay, what property should you buy and
(02:52):
in what order. We're only using that with our financial
advisors at the moment, so that if a client came
in it's like, yeah, I want to use that. We've
got to make sure there's a person checking all of that.
But we have released a public AI chatbot as well,
called Opah's AI, where people can ask any question, a
bit like chat GPT, but it's just been trained on
the hundreds We've written over five hundred articles about property
(03:16):
investing over the last five years, so it's been trained
all on that. One thing that's really interesting that you
won't be able to see though from the public view,
is what people are typing in Now. I've had a
look because I want to know what are people asking
a property AI when you know they're just at home
at two am in the morning typing stuff in and
(03:37):
people write their life stories in there and say I
have this much income, my mortgages this much, how many
properties can I buy? Where should I buy? And what
that showed to me is that there is a real
need for advice, whether it's in shares or property in
New Zealand because people have these questions and previously they
would have gone to Google. Now they're going to be
(03:57):
going to AI. So I'm really to be in this
position where we've created this AI, people are trusting it
enough to write in their live stories and now we
can kind of guide this AI to try and give
good answers in a New Zealand context rather than an
American context. Because usually you talk to an AI and
it's coming from an American based perspective.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
That's a huge amount of information for people to be imparting.
I guess you've got some pretty good safeguards in there
for how you look after that data and how you
use it.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Well, you've got to make sure that you know, not
everybody in the company can access that. That's usually me
looking through as a director of the company to make
sure that when people are typing that stuff and we
are protecting that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Right. I actually did ask your Opah's AI a question.
I said, Look, if we're talking about investments, why is
buying an investment property better in the long term than
investing in the US s and P five hundred?
Speaker 3 (04:51):
What did it say?
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I want to know what you think it said first,
because you've worked this thing through thoroughly and I'm just
a punter, right, Okay, Probably a difference between what I
think it said and what I would say.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Okay, So I'm sure that it probably talked about the
pros and cons. It probably said that shares were higher
risk but ultimately higher return. If it got really advanced,
it might have talked about the impact of debt as well,
and how if you buy properties with debt, that can
make your returns bigger, but it can also make your
losses bigger. Yeah, but what did it say.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
We're pretty good, You're right. I think it's sort of
talked a lot about leverage, and I think that's probably
a good place for us to dive in and say
when you're thinking about investing. A lot of people say
property investing is a way to go, but it's based
on leverage and on taking quite a big risk. If
the value drops, you've effectively lost your entire investment, Whereas
(05:45):
whether shareholding, obviously the gains might be lower, but the
losses tend to be a little bit lower. So I
guess there's probably a bit of a chance there for
people to get both sides of the story if they
look into it and some death. But on that idea
of leverage, talk to me a little bit about that
in property investment at the moment and whether it's a
good time to be leveraged.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yeah, I think the thing in New Zealand was always
considered property to be quite safe, and I think that's
really mischaracterized property because property is actually pretty high risk,
higher return. But when we typically think about property over
the last kind of twenty five a year, so since
nineteen ninety six, the average property increase in New Zealand
(06:27):
has been about six point three percent, and for shares
it's been eight point six percent. So shares have been
higher return, and that's where a lot of people start
by saying cool shares higher return. But then we've also
got to think about risk. Now, when we think about
risk and investment circles, often we're talking about like the
ups and the downs, and so we see that with
shares that you do have some pretty high ups, you
(06:48):
also have some pretty high downs. So if we think
about the best year in the S and P five
hundred since Google Finance started reporting the S and P
five hundred and nineteen ninety six, the best year has
been about fifty four percent up. Great year if you
timed that. The worst year has been down forty five percent.
So shares higher return, but bigger ups and downs. The
(07:08):
worst year and property has been quite recent It was
about fifteen percent down and best has been thirty percent up.
So typically this is the way we think about property
versus shares in New Zealand that cool shares higher return
but also a bit higher risk. But what that conversation
misses is the leverage part. So let's run through those numbers,
(07:29):
because we always think that when you add debt to
an investment, whether it's property or a business, whatever your
asset happens to be. That is going to make the
returns larger, but it's going to make the down side
much larger as well. I call it the mortgage magnifier,
just because I love my alliterations. Mate, who doesn't. So
let's say you're buying a five hundred thousand dollar property.
(07:51):
You put one hundred thousand dollars worth of cash in,
and we've got four hundred k worth of debt. Now,
if that property goes up by five percent, that property
is no longer worth five hundred thousand. It's worth five
hundred and twenty five thousand. Now most people be like, oh, okay, yeah,
that sounds about right. But what that means is that
your equity within that property has gone from one hundred
grand to one hundred and twenty five grand. So yep,
(08:15):
the market went up by five percent, your house went
up by five percent, but your equity within that property
went up by twenty five percent. Now that sounds pretty good,
but we've got to talk about the downside as well.
What happens if it goes the other way. If that
house goes from five hundred k drops by five percent
to full seventy five, you've now lost twenty five thousand
dollars and you're down twenty five percent.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
And we are seeing that at the moment in some markets,
aren't we We are seeing values in some respects kind
of dropping backwards in places, or valuations not kind of
coming in where they were originally put out. So that's
a real risk.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Yeah, the market's starting to smooth out quite a lot,
but it's actually even worse than than what you've made
it out to be. You know, in Lower Hut at
the largest peak to trough drop, property prices were down
like thirty percent. And so the reason that those property
drops hurt isn't just the fact that you've lost thirty
percent on your investment. It's that if you put in
a twenty percent deposit and your property value dropped by
(09:11):
thirty percent, you're now in negative equity. Your return on
the money you put in is negative one hundred and
fifty percent, because you're getting five times if you put
in a twenty percent deposit, you put in a fifth
of the money, you're getting five times the market return.
And so typically we think of New Zealand property little
bit lower risk, a little bit lower return, but an
(09:32):
actual fact, if you're using debt, it's much higher risk
and much higher return than shares. And that's the thing
that I think people miss. And I'm not really trying
to emphasize the higher returns here. I'm trying to emphasize
the higher risk when we take on debt, because that's
the thing a lot of people forget about.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Sure, I mean, and that's it's great that I guess
the AI spat that out is the kind of the
number one thing to address. I just want to talk
as well a little bit about some of the other
aspects that talks about about how property is a tangible
asset for a lot of people, it's a huge attraction.
But of course, anything you can't pick up and move,
anything you can't sell quickly, it makes it a little
bit less liquid. It's harder to get out of that
(10:09):
position if you can see a problem coming. So is
that another thing that people really need to consider it
with property?
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Well, it kind of depends on who you are. You see.
For me myself, I don't care that property is bricks
and mortar. To me, that's not a huge pro But
I hear from a lot of people that they like it.
They like that they can drive past the property, they
can see it. If they needed two in fifteen years time,
they could do it up, improve its value and sell it.
(10:36):
And so some key weis really value that side of
property and they say, big pro for me is that
it's tangible. Me myself, I don't care so much about that.
But for some people it's a big pro.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, okay, And that idea of a less liquid market,
lesser ability to sort of liquid eight things. Potentially that's
not necessarily sort of a big problem from the people
that you're seeing.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Oh well, for some people that has a big issue. Yeah,
especially because when you buy a property and you go
to sell it, the average days to sell might be
like forty five days, or it might take thirty days
to sell a property. But by the time you talk
to a real estate age and by the time you
get somebody to say yes, I'm going to buy your
property and then they pay you the money, it's more
like three months. So it can take easily three to
(11:19):
six months for you to say cool, I'm going to
list this property to eventually sell it. Now, that's probably
one of the reasons why it works, really well as
a long term store of value or for a long
term investment. But the big pro I see around that
is that people don't look at their property values every
single day. I think this is another one of the
reasons why people think that shares is more risky than property,
(11:42):
because they look at the value where they look at
their key we save every single day, and they see
it going up and down, and that scares them. To me,
that's not something to be too scared about. The reason
that you look at property and you think it's safer
quote unquote is because the value on homes not codd
n Z only updates every two weeks, or you're only
looking at your bank ap once a month and it
(12:03):
updates the property value, so it appears to be less volatile,
but simply because it's a more I liquid asset. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Right, So, what are some of the market specifics that
you think are important to consider right now in terms
of availability of property, in terms of prices and so on.
I mean, it's a pretty broad question, but it feels
to me like that's an entire section that we can
talk about here.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yes, there are two main things that I'm really interested
at the moment. The first thing that gets me really
excited is that there is a huge number of listings
on the market. You go on trade, we are one
roof for real estate, dot coded and Z. At the moment,
there's like over thirty thousand properties currently available. It's basically
at a ten year high. And so as an investor,
that gets me quite excited because there's a lot of
choice out there. It is a buyer's market rather than
(12:48):
a sales market. One thing that's just as a bit
of a sign about this, it's really interesting that a
lot of people seem to be quite scared of buyers markets.
They see that property prices are kind of going sowards
at the moment, especially over the last six months, seasonally
adjusted house prices have basically been flat, and some people say, oh,
that's really scary. I'm not sure if it's a good
(13:09):
time to buy. Holl Tho, it's a great time to buy.
It's a buyers market, heaps a choice out there. But
the thing that I really care about when I'm thinking
about where am I going to invest is I always
try and judge, well, what might be the next market
to take off. So I'll give you an example of
that back in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, christ Church property
prices were very flat and had been flat for a
(13:31):
long time. But what we were tracking was, well, how
expensive is christ Church compared to the rest of the
country and compared to where we would expect it to be.
And what we thought was christ Church is looking really
cheap right now. We directed a lot of our investors
to start buying in christ Church, and over the last
couple of years, crash Church property prices are up fifty
percent and they didn't really tank that much during the
(13:52):
downturn because Crasschach was still relatively cheap compared to the
rest of the country. So I call it this overvalued
undervalued model. Data is free on our website. We calculate
it for every council area and every region in the country.
And that's one of the main things I'm trying to
look at, which is basically saying, is a particular area
relatively cheap or relatively expensive compared to where we'd expected
(14:13):
to be, because that kind of gives us a good
indication about which areas might take off next.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
And I guess you've seen the market adjust to that
because now we've effectively got I mean a glut of
properties there in christ Church, haven't we It's an area
that so we're lead to believe there's a lot available.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Well, there's a lot of properties that have been built,
but there is a very large difference between the number
of properties that have been built and a glut. To me,
a glut, what does that look like? That looks like
you can't rent a property. Actually, our property management team
are renting properties pretty quickly in christ Church, much quicker
than Auckland, so we're not necessarily seeing that. I think
(14:49):
what we are seeing in New Zealand is that we
are our housing stock is changing because the makeup of
the country is changing. So if I took you back
the seventies or eighties, your standard house was kind of
three bedrooms one bathroom. Now people are having fewer kids,
we've got fewer people living in each house and so
(15:10):
we don't need as many bedrooms. But there's this move
to kind of compact quality where even though we don't
need as many bedrooms, we have higher expectations around what
our house is going to give us. That's why more
people want two bathrooms within a property as opposed to
just the one that we would have had previously. So
I think there is a change in the expectations of
(15:31):
kiwis and therefore we're seeing a change in the housing stock.
That's why you see a lot of building. I don't
necessarily say look at that and say that's a supply issue,
because some of it is demand driven.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
In terms of diversification, if we're thinking still back to
that same idea that we started in with, which is
why would I put my money into a house rather
than into an equity investment. You could spread your bets
a lot more easily, can't you if you are putting
money into a market, Whereas if you are investing in
anyone property that you're locked up, you're exposed to climate risk,
(16:02):
rental risk, all of these other kinds of issues. You
never can pick your neighbors, how I mean, is there
any way around that problem.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
One thing that's really interesting when we're thinking about diversification
is those numbers I shared before about S and P
five hundred versus zed house prices, the inset house price
index or medium sale price, whatever graph you look at
online is a little bit misleading because if you invest
in the S and P five hundred, you can put
your hundred bucks in and you can become reasonably diversified
(16:32):
buying up all five hundred of those stocks, and so
the ups and downs can be smoothed out because you
are being diversified. Now when you buy an investment property,
you're not buying the average house in New Zealand. You're
not going to go up and down with the market.
You're buying one specific property in one specific area that
is basically not diversified at all, and so the ups
(16:55):
and downs that you get as a property investor will
be much larger than the ones that you see when
you google median sale price in z for houses, or
look at any graph of NZED house prices and it
will look like, oh, most of the time house prices
are going up, yes, but that's because sometimes Auckland will
be going up in value, when Wellington's flat. Sometimes christ
(17:17):
Church will be going up in value well and the
Cargol is flat, and so it will look as if
New Zealand house prices are going up constantly, but you're
not buying in for Cargol and christ Church and Auckland
and Wellington. When you buy your first property, you're just
buying one specific property and one specific market, and so
the value increase will be much more volatile than the
(17:37):
overall market. And that's a nerdy point, but it's a
very important one to get across.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
You know. I guess it's like there is no average
houses there, right, that's the that's the thing, right, It's
very very specific. It's a very bespoke kind of investment
in that kind of respect. I guess that appeals a
lot to some people, but to some others that might
there might be some pressures on there they might be understanding. Gosh,
I'm now on for a bunch of maintenance. You know,
the rates bills going nuts. We've touched on climate there.
(18:04):
I mean, we're getting some quite granular assessments from the
insurance companies about whether they'll even extend cover over properties
and so on. I mean, are you finding that from
the people that open as you talk to the customers
coming through the door, that that to turn off or
something that they have to try and get over. Are
people stepping back as a result of that, or how
are you helping them deal with some of those challenges.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Well, one of the main things we do at Opus
Partners is we only focus on new built investment properties
and so let me give you an example, if you
bought an older property that was built in the nineteen
seventies and that property is now on a floodplane, chances
are that property is built quite low to the ground
and will have a reasonable risk of flooding. For a
property to be built on a floodplane, if it's a
(18:44):
new build today, it has to be built up off
the ground. You'll often see when you're looking at townhouses
they might have steps up to them. Typically it might
need to be about half a meter off the ground.
And so these properties are built to withstand typically a
one in two hundred year flood. And so that is
one of the the kind of risk mitigations for our
clients and one of the reasons why they kind of
prefer new builds because they've got to be built to
(19:06):
the current building code. That doesn't mean that new builds
are right for everybody. You don't brand new properties, but
some people prefer them.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Companies like yours do have a relationship with developers as well.
That's I mean you ten out of ten for plain
language you're talking about you don't have to pay us
because the developer is paying us, and that, I guess
then creates a relationship risk there as well. You know,
am I being looked after as the developing being looked after?
How do you navigate that situation?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Well, there's a couple of ways you do it. The
first thing is we split our company in two. So
we've got a property company, OPA's Property, and then we've
got an investment company which is OPA's Partners. And effectively
these two companies are separate, but they serve different clients.
So effectively OPA's Partners, which gives financial advice, our only
client is the person who wants to get advice OPA's Property.
(19:55):
They specifically focus on the developers. So the first thing
by splitting our company in two and saying this is
who you serve, this is who you serve, that kind
of puts a really nice line in the sand practically
for our staff members to say, this is what you
care about, this is what you care about. The other
thing that we mainly do is when somebody buys a
property through us, the commission or the fee that we
(20:16):
get is flat. So what I mean by that is
if you come to us and you buy a nine
hundred thousand dollar property or a six hundred thousand dollar property,
the fee that we get is always the same. It's
quite funny. I had somebody messaged me once and they said, look,
I understand that I'm not incentivized to buy a more
expensive property through you, but isn't your incentive for me
(20:37):
to then buy two cheaper properties? And I was like, oh,
and trying to solve this like one incentive to say, hey,
we don't necessarily want you to buy a more expensive
property if it's not right for you, We've inavertently created
another buyas. But I think the main thing you've got
to do is Kiwis are smart.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Kiwis have like this really good bull crap detector, and
so we like to be upfront and honest and put
it out there. One thing that we did was I
completely re wrote our disclosure statements online. So if you
go onto any investment company's website, whether it's like Milford
or Craig's Investment Partners Ask or somebody else, they have
to have like very important legal information online about how
(21:16):
their company is structured, how they get paid in all
of that jazz and I was on Reddit once, the
cispit of the Internet, and I saw that somebody had
linked it and I was like, oh, wow, people will
read this. And so what I did is I went
back and I said to our compliance saying, hey, this
is all in legal jargon. Let's make this plain English.
(21:37):
Let's explain how all of our companies work so that
people can say, well, okay, maybe I do want the
free advice. I understand their commercial biases, but they are
upfront about it, and I trust myself enough to detect
if they're doing me wrong or not. And so I
went away and I wrote that in plain English, you
wouldn't believe it. People create accounts and write comments on
(21:58):
our legal disclosure statements say thank you for the transparency.
This is really interesting. I'm looking forward to our meeting
and things like that. It's actually really amazing. Kiwis are smart,
and I think if you put the information out there
and say these are all of our biases, this is
where we're coming from, but this is what we offer,
it's up to you to make the decision. I think
people are pretty open to that.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
So this is why you sort of front footed this
as well. I think one of your podcasts and explain, hey,
here are some of the common criticisms people have of
people in our industry, and let me tell you about
it was that part of that same journey.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
I did another video where I went through Reddit comments
with complaints about both my company, OPA's partners and all
of our competitors as well. And so what our philosophy
is is, well, we should try and tell you about
as many of those bad things upfront, so that you
know about them, so you know what you're getting into,
and then investors can make the right decision for them.
(22:50):
I think all companies should do this. I think there
is this sense that, oh, but if I say the
bad things about my company, then people won't want to
use me. Well, actually, I think that a company like
Craig's Investment Partners or Milford should say, this is how
many of our customers have lost money over the last year,
this is how many of our customers don't make the
(23:11):
benchmark return over x period. Because then people can make
their own informed decision. And I suppose that's one of
the reasons why we leaned real heavy into the risks.
At the start of this conversation.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
You're inviting me to ask how many of your customers
lost Oh.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Do you know what, I don't have that exact number,
but if they purchased in twenty twenty one or twenty
twenty two. I can guarantee it as almost all of them,
because the market has been really, really bad. And in fact,
one thing that's hard to see within property investment is
how your property has performed compared to the market. So
I ended up making this really cool tool called the
(23:47):
Market Mover Calculator. You can google it and find it
and you can put your property value in whatever you
purchased it for, and it will show you if it
followed the market perfectly in your local area, what would
it be worth today? And that lets you see in
a way that I've never been able to get across
to people, well, how is your property doing or performing
compared to the overall market.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
We were talking about developers and so on, and you've
been great and open about the relationship. Are you looking
at what they are doing and are they talking to you?
Are they talking to you about how they raise their money,
or are they talking to you about the kind of
ventures that they want to undertake, So that there's a
bit of a conversation there about, hey, we see a
trend for smaller but higher value stuff, or there's interest
(24:31):
in investing in these kind of things To build as well.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Is there that kind of conversation. Well, there has to be,
isn't it. Because the beautiful thing about how we're set
up at Open's Partners is we've also got a property
management team. So not only might somebody choose to say, oh,
I'm going to buy a property through you, guys, I
might even get your mortgage through you, but I'm going
to get the tenants as well. And that means that
we see all of the problems that happen specifically like
(24:56):
what sort of properties might attract poor equality tenants. So
there's a big trend at the moment for developers to
build studios because they are very profitable, and also you
can sell them at a low price. So I'm talking
about like buying a four hundred thousand dollars or three
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, like very small apartment. Now
that would be very easy to say to invest is
(25:16):
this is a great deal, But the tenants are usually
very very bad. And the reason is because you tend
to attract tenants who are quite transitory, and so you've
got a lot of moving in moving out. And so
one of the big things we do is talk to
our property managers and say, what's renting really? Well, what
problems do you have with how developers are building properties.
I'll tell you a little story like that's so kind
(25:38):
of obvious. There was a property that one of our
property managers were trying to rent out and there was
a problem with the pantry that this developer hadn't built
a decent enough sized pantry and all of your food
was going to be stored above the sinks. And they said,
this is a real problem, like people are being turned
off by this. So you bet that we then go
back to the developers and say, well, we can't exit.
(26:00):
We need to have really good pantries, or we need
to make sure that the bedrooms are this size. And
so there's this conversation about what's happening in the market
and feeding that back to developers. It's really about saying, hey,
can you build the right investments so that it's going
to be the right fit for our clients.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
I'm just thinking as well, the government's really shaken up
some legislation lately. This is probably more about offshore investors,
but I'm wondering whether there's an impact on how New
Zealand investors could be affected by this, they've opened up
the playing field so that it's easier for foreign investors
to invest in build to rent properties. They've got to
be a certain size I think more than twenty dwellings
and that I don't know whether we're seeing much action
(26:40):
or a response to that in the market. But are
you seeing more of those coming onstream or down the tracks?
And is that an opportunity that New Zealanders might increasingly
take up and increasingly would that shut the door on
other kinds of developments potentially? Is it going to direct
that capital away?
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Well, it's a really interesting question because that law change
only happened in February this year, and it's not that
it's a free for all where overseas investors can come
and buy up these properties that have twenty or more dwellings.
They've still got to go through a consent process, but
it's a fast trained consent process. Personally, I haven't seen
any evidence that there has been a rush of overseas
(27:17):
investors designed to come in. But what I would say
is that the build to rent sector, where a company
comes out simplicity, is a really good example of this.
At the moment they say we're going to build these
big apartment blocks and we are going to rent them
out long term. To be honest, I feel quite excited
about that because that is a way, especially if you're
more of a yield based investor, that you might be
able to get access to property without having to personally
(27:39):
take on that debt, which is one of those big risks.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
So there's an option there, but it's not a space
that you.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Play in, not personally. But I'm very interested in seeing
how it goes, especially once we open it up to overseas.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Capital Financial Markets Authority. They are in court, i think
last week in the High Court trying to get a
definition of something called we're getting very pointy headed here
the wholesale investor eligibility, which if people have been following it,
they might know it more from some of the big
property development companies that got into a bit of trouble
a couple of years ago. But this is basically saying,
if you are not a mum and dad investor, not
(28:11):
a retail investor that is looking at something with a
product disclosure statement, you're a wholesale investor, you're rich, or
you're particularly over a certain level of wealth, you can
take a higher risk and you can be into these
higher risk investments. And that's how a lot of property
companies were accessing capital I guess in the short run
before they go to the bank, so they could purchase
(28:32):
land or carry people through the time while they were
building and so on. I mean tightening that sort of
stuff up, is that going to change the dynamic? Is
that what you're hearing as well, or what are your
thoughts there?
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Well, I'm quite excited that the Financial Markets Authority is
trying to clear that up because what is alleged to
have happened is that you might get a mum and
dad investor who sold their farm or sold their house
and now they're cashed up. Then they're scrolling through Facebook
or Instagram and they and add ten percent guaranteed return
and they think that sounds quite low risk. I'm going
(29:06):
to click on that, and then they get a salesperson
on the phone saying, hey, yeah, come and invest it
with us. Now, this is where there is this big
loophole which really needs to close. Even if you weren't
what's called a wholesale investor, where you were a financial advisor,
you were over a certain level of wealth, you could
go across to your financial advisor or your lawyer or
(29:28):
your accountant, and you could self certify that yes, I
understand all of these risks, Can you sign me off,
and I'm going to go invest in that. And the
risk is that people started investing in assets and funds
that were far too risky for them, and that this
loophole was being misused. Now there is a place for it,
(29:49):
but it's not in getting mom and dad investors to
put their money into developer funds, because that is entirely
risk and we saw that with both Duval and with
Black Robin, where people had put their money in and
they thought it was safe, and now they're not able
to get it out and it is incredibly sad, and
so tightening that up is going to be really good.
I'm encouraging developers to work with the finance companies that
(30:11):
are already out there because you can get access to capital.
What some developers are trying to do, and we're trying
to do and are trying to do, is say, well,
can we raise our own for the average investor that
is too risky and they shouldn't be able to do it.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
It's been a really great talking with you and I
wondered if we could think about finishing with a look ahead,
really a long way ahead, when nearing a point in history.
I suppose where you know, some New Zealanders may be
in a fortunate position where they inherit a share of
a property that their parents purchased in a time when
(30:45):
obviously the interest rates and someone were different, but they've
enjoyed substantial capital gain over that period, and so there's
almost like a generational wealth transfer coming. What does that
mean for the market you're in, for the people that
you're talking to and the choices that they're having to make.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
The people that tend to come and work with Opus
partners tend to be better off financially because you if
you're going to buy an investment property, you've got to
have some income behind you and you've got to have
some wealth behind you. So for your question was very
specifically about the clients that we work with, they're going
to be made better off for this. The people I
(31:24):
worry about other people who are not our clients, and
because the people who tend to go and get financial
advice in New Zealand are those people who have money,
because that is who the industry is set up for
you know, it's very hard to make money as a
business if you're giving advice to people who don't have
a lot of money, right, and so you don't see
and to see as many for profit businesses playing in
(31:45):
that space. But that's who I worry more about, because
those are the sorts of people that aren't going to
have that intergenerational wealth, whose parents perhaps weren't able to
purchase a property many many years ago, and it makes
it so much harder to retire well or to say cool,
I've now got the money where I'm able to buy
a home to live in for myself and grow my wealth.
So that's one of going to be one of the
(32:05):
big questions of our time, and how we deal with that.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
I guess it's how you respond to that worry that's
as important as anything else, isn't it. How do you
address that lack or that need.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Well, I can tell you what I'm doing personally, which
is putting out thousands of podcasts and thousands of articles
about what you can do and what the options are.
We're giving a seminar, a property investment seminar down in
christ Church.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
It would have been a couple of weeks ago and
afterwards a couple of eighteen year olds came up and
they said, hey, look, we don't have rich parents, but
we want to make money through property. We loved your presentation.
Should we buy a new build off here? The answer
was no, No, you absolutely should not. Because you're eighteen
years old and you've got more time than money. You
(32:45):
should start going out or Our advice was think about
going out and flipping properties, something that we don't work with.
That's sort of strategy we help people use at Opus Partners,
but it's something that for these people, that is the
way we can help you move forward as say, well,
this is the strategy that would best suit your situation
right now, go away and think about it, and yeah,
pull your deposits together. See if you're able to start
(33:07):
doing that to move forward. So it's a tough question.
I don't know what the government should do, but I
know what I'm going to do about it because that's
all I can focus on, which is continuing to put
out content that hopefully helps New Zealanders.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
And that is a wonderful thing to share. So thank
you very much McKnight from Opah's partners, and thank you
for watching for listening Wherever you're listening, where your podcasts iHeart, Spotify,
Apple or straight off the Shares's app Kumtu. That's us
for this week.
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