A survey that found landlords would raise rents if a Labour-led government made it harder for them to make a profit is little more than scaremongering, the Labour party says.
A Property Investors Federation survey asked landlords if they would raise the rent of their properties if Labour was elected. Photo: RNZ / Diego Opatowski
Labour said it will create a level playing field for first home buyers by limiting landlords' ability to offset rental losses against other income in order to reduce their tax bill.
Property Investors Federation members were asked if Labour policies were law would they raise rents and if so by how much.
They were given options starting at $5 a week going up to more than $40 a week.
Two-thirds of 817 respondents to the emailed survey said they would need to raise rents by at least $20 a week under Labour, while nearly 13 percent said they would go further than a $40 increase.
But Labour's housing spokesperson Phil Twyford said rents would stabilise, and then come down, under its policies.
"We're going to massively increase the supply of housing in the market, building 100,000 affordable homes on top of what the private market is already producing and we're going to rein in out of control property speculation that has been largely responsible in the last nine years for pushing rents up so high."
Mr Twyford said the federation's survey was fundamentally flawed.
"It's based on a few hundred self-selected respondents out of, what, more than 200,000 landlords across the country. The survey did not provide full information about Labour's policies," he said.
"It's just self-interested scaremongering."
The federation's executive officer, Andrew King, said the Labour Party should release its own analysis of how much the policies would cost landlords, and therefore tenants.
"This will push up rent at a higher rate than it would if these policies were not introduced. What we're asking is, is that tenants, families who are renting, we think it's fair that they know what these policies will cost them in rent increases."
More than a third of the landlords said it was very or extremely likely they would sell their rental property if Labour's policies became law.