Skyrocketing Rates Contributing to Home Loss
As the Deputy Chair of Grey Power Hamilton, I was contacted by a distressed Real Estate agent who has been contacted by three pensioners who need to sell their home because they cannot afford the rates.
Does anyone understand the stress the financial position these three homeowners find themselves in? They are cash poor but asset rich. However, this is not just an asset to them, it is their home.
The asset value was not the purpose for owning a home. It was purchased by saving for the purpose of providing shelter for the family and retirement. It is the place they have spent a lifetime developing, a safe familiar place with friends and neighbours they know, including endless memories. Selling this home is like giving up a part of themselves.
The home was never purchased to earn money, yet the rates determination process deems them, unfairly, to be too rich to deserve to stay there.
What options are available to these three retirees?
1. Sell and go to a retirement village (Risk: insufficient capital to move into a retirement village)
2. Sell and rent (Risk: their money runs out and they are left with no shelter)
3. Council Rates Rebate ( insufficient to ease the financial burden of skyrocketing rates demands)
4. Bank Reverse Mortgage (Risk: insufficient capital to move into a retirement village)
5. Council Reverse Mortgage (Risk: Council now own your home and control your future housing options)
The announcement by Hamilton Council in 2025 stated that rates will increase by an average of 15%. In my case the rate for 2024 was $4,060.60 and in 2025 is $4,548.00. This rate increase is $18.30 per fortnight.
My superannuation increase for the same period is $29.16 per fortnight. That leaves $10.86 for the sky rocketing energy and insurance increases, not forgetting the even bigger increase in the cost of food.
Hamilton City Council distributed $212,250 as a rates rebate in 2020. They are now wasting $500,000 on investigating a ‘Ratepayer Assistance Scheme’ (reverse mortgage), that is not required and morally should be using this money to increase the rates rebate. Would this increase ease the financial plight of many home owners? More importantly, how does this ‘solution’ do anything but put off further the need for the council to rein in its wasteful spending. When a pedestrian crossing costs $750,000 more than most people will have saved over their lifetimes, it is hard to justify these rates increases.
Unfortunately the 5 options illustrated above do not solve the problem as the home owner has no control over Council excessive expenditure and increases expressed in a percentage seriously disadvantages those on the middle and lower income.
As a community we need elected members who listen to the community real life stories and finding solutions that ensure these potential calamities do not occur.
Your vote for change is important.