Investing in Kiwi Bach Culture

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airplane, charter boat, Coromandel Peninsula, holiday accommodation, investment, Mark Withers, Northland, real estate, The New Zealand Herald

Sled Bach in the Coromandel

It’s a time of year when Kiwis traditionally head to the beaches and lakes to enjoy some rest and recreation. The Kiwi bach [as in “bachelor pad”] culture is never stronger than over our Christmas and New Year holidays. Many people will no doubt be contemplating the goal of acquiring and enjoying a family bach.

Achieving the goal of a bach is something that many people have discounted as being unattainable, however in recent years the financial crisis has resulted in falling property values in many of our traditional holiday destinations such as Northland, for example.

One of the simplest strategies available to aid in the affordability of a bach is to consider the possibility of making it available for rent. If one considers that deriving as little as NZD 15,000 [NZD 1.00 = USD 0.83] a year from a bach at a mortgage interest rate of 6.5 per cent, this income could service the interest on a debt of approximately NZD 230,000 and in so doing provides a not insubstantial contribution to the cost of ownership.

There are also income tax consequences for those considering renting their bach to assist with the costs of ownership. For the 2014 income tax year the [New Zealand] Government has introduced new Mixed-use Asset rules. These rules are designed to restrict the deductions that had previously been available to taxpayers who have mixed-use assets like baches, charter boats and private airplanes available to produce rental income for part of the time but at other times were reserved for personal use.

The introduction of the new law has created some new complexities for bach owners, but at the same time those who are genuine about deriving a rental income from their bach still have opportunities to deduct expenditure. Expenditure that is specifically in relation to the income earning process like advertising and marketing will be directly deductible. General costs like rates, interest and insurance must now be apportioned relative to the use of the bach. For example, if the bach is rented for fifty nights and used privately for fifty nights, fifty per cent of the overall deductions will be claimable against the rental income achieved.

There are also new restrictions on the counting of rents from associated persons and rents from friends and family where the nightly rent is reduced by twenty per cent or more.

Another feature of the new rules is that if a loss is generated, this tax loss will only be able to be offset against a taxpayer’s other income if the gross rent from the bach exceeds two per cent of the government valuation of the property. Readers contemplating the tax implications of investing in a rented bach should seek specific tax advice on these new rules from their tax adviser.

From a marketing perspective, marketing baches is all about marketing the holiday, not the home. Very powerful market initiatives include organizing a referral network of other people in your area who are also seeking to rent out their baches. Another tip for those seeking to maximize their rent is to make the bach pet-friendly.

If income is the goal it will also be important to select a location that is not too far from a main center. Realistically, people are reluctant to drive more than three hours for a weekend stay.

As you contemplate your holidays, spare some time to have a look in your local holiday destination’s real estate window. Who knows, you just may be tempted to look at a bach that could not only provide wonderful family pleasure but could be an excellent investment.

Mark Withers – The New Zealand Herald

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Breaking Bad with the Goldberg Variations

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airplane, airport lounge, Albuquerque, bassline, Beethoven, Breaking Bad, Christmas, emotions, epithet, George Clooney, Goldberg Variations, Goldbergs Anonymous, hand-crossing, harpsichord, Honoré de Balzac, Jeremy Denk, manual, pho, piano, Seattle, Tchaikovsky, The Guardian, Toby Saks, Trio in A minor, Walter White

Jeremy Denk

I stopped watching Breaking Bad early in season three for a strange reason: I felt it was bad for my soul. Frankly, I had never been that concerned about my soul before, but when charred plane fragments began to rain down on Albuquerque (fans know what I’m talking about), I felt a dull ache, an unusual suffering, and I decided enough was enough. If you like, Breaking Bad is the Goldberg Variations (BWV 988) of misery. How many terrible consequences can Walter White reap from his first bad decision? At least as far as I watched, the show’s approach was exhaustive: a survey of emotional, physical, and spiritual harm. The Goldbergs are also exhaustive, and contingent on Bach’s first fateful decision, on the bassline he has chosen, the parameters he has set forth.

In fact, the Goldberg Variations have caused me more misery than any other piece of music in history, with the exception of the Tchaikovsky Trio in A minor (for totally different reasons). How many hours have I spent backstage fretting, knowing that there will be several insufferable know-it-alls in the audience, with their seven hundred recordings and deeply considered opinions? How many hours have I spent practicing those passages where the two hands climb over each other, then turn around (as if revisiting the site of an accident) and head for each other again?

The Goldbergs, originally for a two-keyboard instrument, become uniquely treacherous when played on just one. There are many impossible crossings, many unplayable moments. You have to decide which hand goes over the other, and practice how to make the switch smoothly; but there is always the possibility you will be on stage, communing with the spheres, and your fingers and wrists will literally tangle – like two dancers who stumble over each other – scattering wrong notes into paradise. You must always also be reminded that the instrument you are playing them on is the “wrong” one, especially by critics.

On top of their difficulty, the Goldbergs are terrifyingly clean. The work clings mostly to the purity of G Major, and its materials are so self-evident: the variation with the scales chasing each other in thirds (horrible memories of practicing scales as a child); the variation with the arpeggios (ditto); the variation with the scurrying passages in one hand and the leaps in the other. It almost like a lesson plan, with modular units, and everyone knows them – they are as well-traveled as a seasoned flier in an airport lounge.

I never wanted anything to do with the Goldbergs, but one day – I don’t know how – my friend Toby Saks convinced me to learn them for her festival in Seattle. She thought it would change my life. With one hasty yes I was committed – you cannot do a program substitution with the Goldbergs; it would be like trying to replace George Clooney. As usual, I procrastinated, and a panicky, cold December and January ensued, a Christmas holiday spent with a piano, wondering why it couldn’t have just been fifteen variations, say, or eighteen, instead of thirty? I broke them into bundles of five, to cope with the project’s enormity.

The day before my first performance, I remember sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant, hunched over a giant bowl of pho (outside fell classic Seattle drizzle), while my musician friends murmured consoling epithets at me – “I’m sure it will be fine” – treating me like a patient who was about to undergo an operation.

The first performance was a bit like a dream, much of it bad, but a few variations had something, I felt. My first taste of Goldberg addiction. Was I encouraged or war-scarred? A second period of obsession began, going over those stubborn variations in order to understand the independence (or lack thereof) of my hands, trying to find the most transparent and loving way to express them. And now, nine years later, with a recording under my belt, I probably belong in Goldbergs Anonymous.

The Goldbergs, insular and obsessed, have all the failings of classical music in general. The piece is a text reflecting on itself, satisfied in its own world, suggesting that everything you would ever want to know is contained within. The variations (by definition music about music) are subject to countless insider discussions in the outer world, to comparisons of recordings like heavyweight bouts, to that annoying word “definitive.” Despite this, Bach’s smile wins through. The piece is a lesson in many things, but primarily in wonder: the way that the tragic variations fuse seamlessly into the breathlessly comic, the way that simple scales become energy, joy, enthusiasm, the celebration of the most fundamental elements of music. This is the kind of beatific happiness that Beethoven eventually tried to attain, after the heroic happiness of the middle period. The last movements of Beethoven’s op. 109 and op. 111 invoke the Goldbergs, and represent a joy beyond achievement.

The copout of Breaking Bad, shared by many great novels and works of art (I’m thinking of you, Balzac!), is to leave us mired in a sea of human degradation. It is often easier to write sadness. And happiness easily becomes a shortcut, or a falsehood; “happy ending” is often a derogatory term. Of course, the ending of the Goldbergs is cut with melancholy (unlike Walter’s pure blue stuff). When the theme returns at the end, you realize this is the last time you will hear that turn into bittersweet E minor (melancholy about melancholy), and also the last time you will experience the chain of fifths with which Bach escapes from it. I’ll admit it always chokes me up, not because the piece is over, not because things are ending, but because of a sense of the completeness of everything that has come before, the rightness, and – if it doesn’t sound too cheesy to say – the radiance of experience. It gives you that rare thing in human existence: a sense that, at the end of something, it has all been worthwhile.

Jeremy Denk – The Guardian