Anyone renting a home in Auckland could be facing a substantial increase in rent at their next rent review, with the median rent charged on newly tenanted properties for the region increasing by $30 a week in the second quarter of this year.
The sharp increase in rent in the second quarter (April to June), which took the median rent for newly tenanted properties in the Auckland Region to $630 a week, came after an extended period in which rents in the region had remained relatively flat.
Between the fourth quarter (Q4) 2021 and Q1 2023, the median rent in Auckland bounced around between $590 and $600 a week, followed by the sudden jump to $630 a week in the second quarter of the year.
The big increase in Auckland rents in the second quarter was particularly significant because the national increase was just $5 a week. (See the table below for the quarterly and annual median rent movements in all major urban districts).
It also comes at a time when the number of new homes being completed in Auckland is at a record high, with 1742 new dwellings completed in Auckland in the month of June, so the jump in rents does not appear to be due to a decline in the overall supply of housing in the region.
While there are likely several factors which feed into where rents are set, the latest increase corresponds with a big surge in immigration that has occurred this year, with almost 17,000 foreign workers arriving in New Zealand in the month of June alone. It's likely Auckland was their main destination.
A sudden jump in population will inevitably have an effect on demand for housing which will feed through to rents.
So while the Government may have oiled the squeaky wheel of employers squealing about being unable to recruit staff by opening up immigration, the downside appears to be the pressure this places on the housing market and the inevitable effect on rents.
The rent figures referred to above are based on bonds received by Tenancy Services (MBIE), which will mostly reflect newly tenanted properties.
That makes the figures a leading indicator of movements in the rental market because rents on new tenancies are usually set at whatever level the market will bear, and those levels are then used as a reference point by other landlords when they review the rents of existing tenancies.
That suggests many tenants in Auckland could be facing a substantial increase in their rent at the next review, something that could bring tears of joy to landlords, but just tears to tenants.
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99 Comments
Big jump in the quarter, but rents at 5.6% annualised growth are still lower than inflation.
I thought all those landlords told us interest rates and tax changes would send rents skyrocketing?
Because, y'know, the expenses of assets dictate the incomes right?
Rents are skyrocketing, it was totally predictable. Now more expensive for me to live here than Auckland now if I was renting. Half way decent house in my street is now $700 a week.
They are 'skyrocketing' less than wages, or CPI....
Do appreciate the caption photo evoking Charlie Chaplin & Jackie Coogan, the kid. Chaplin got famous laughs aplenty but tenants in New Zealand will hardly be laughing nowadays will they.
Q2 rent inflation in Auckland was circa 5% (20% annualised) Q2 cpi was 1.1% (4.4% annualised). Are you perhaps looking at yoy figures as opposed to the quarterly ones being flagged? Property is a slow beast that takes time to move, contracts are usually set for a minimum of a year at a time meaning changes can take 12-18 months to even start showing up in the stats.
Recent research said that rents move in tandem with wage increases.... yes right
Rents move in tandem with demand and supply for rentals.
What does immigration do to demand for rentals? Increase it.
What does an increase in demand for something with reasonably inelastic supply (such as houses) do to the price? Increase it.
Conclusion, more people = higher rents than would otherwise be the case.
Not the whole picture by any means - probably quite a minor consieration.
When I presented to Parliament on my weekly rent maximum formula - the only questions I got was about the research I had done on the actual rising costs landlords were facing (i.e., maintenance, upgrades, council rates and interest rates) and whether a rent maximum would be sufficient to cover those costs. They all looked at the market as a cost-plus one, but that is not how it actually functions.
The yield equation drives rents - this is based on today's market price, not the purchase price paid for the asset.
If house prices go up, rents follow given landlords are stuck on the yield equation - regardless how ridiculous price rises have been and the fact that for many - these rises equate to nothing more than unrealised capital gains.
In a functioning marketplace, the rental market should be driven by return-on-investment and profitability on that (i.e., cost-plus) - not yield. The longer you hold the investment, the less you have to charge compared to new entrants - and hence the more competitive your product. It would be accepted that a new build would (under normal market function/conditions) attract a premium.
But the 'old dungers' would be cheap as chips to rent - student digs with commensurate prices.
Ours is not a functioning market.
What if a property had been in the same family since the 1800s. Your model still says the rent should be set based on the purchase price ?
Yep - unless of course it's some amazing heritage building that has been fully modernised in keeping with the era of its build, i.e., a showpiece.
No no no Kate. Costs don't determine rent - despite some landlords here claiming they put up rent when costs rise.
As a landlord you determine the rent by what you can get. That is what actually happens when you go to rent it.
If costs had plunged in recent years, and we had the same demand recently generated by immigration, rates would still have risen.
And if costs have risen as they have, but landlords advertised for tenants and nobody wanted the houses, rents would go down. No relation to cost.l
I realise you think good things will come from your rent command scheme, I think not.
I disagree with your assessment that landlords increase rent based on 'whatever they can get'. I know of numerous landlords who don't do this and would prefer to charge a lesser rent for tenancy tenure.
Your idea that if costs plunge but rents remain static or rise is a function of economics - supply and demand. The more rental homes available therefore a bigger choice for tenants the rents would drop to meet the market.
The fact is, we don't have an excess rental housing supply that favours landlords. The Labour government and their disincentive policies towards property investors are one of the significant factors here!
Lesser than what though? Equivalent market rent with a discount of course! It's a pricing strategy that is still benchmarked against "whatever they can get". Unless your numerous landlords are charging $200 per week for a 3 bedroom home because that's what they rented it out for 20 years ago.
I was thinking exactly that
Kate, everyone should have the right to maximise the return on their investments, according to market conditions. The way to make the market function is to make it as easy as possible to build, to increase supply, to equalise supply and demand. Maybe they should take GST off the price of new houses, this would drop the market by 15% within months...or more, because it would seriously incentivise new builds, which could lead to oversupply, great for dropping house prices and rents
House prices are dropping - and quickly. Rents are not following that downwards trend (almost a 30% decrease since 2021 peak). If they were, I wouldn't have bothered petitioning Parliament.
Between interest rates and changes to interest deductibility the cost of houses for investors is higher than it was, when one reduces and the other is dropped then there will be incentive to build/supply houses. In the medium term the only way to reduce rents is to have more houses per head of population. Your way would work in the short term, but be an utter calamity in the medium term- who would build houses if you can't get a return off it?
who would build houses if you can't get a return off it?
Builders who build for homeowners. Homeowners don't expect a return.
Kate, they aren't dropping because population is growing faster than new supply. Harvey makes some very good points.
population is growing faster than new supply
That's an assumption. The orthodox assumption. I get so sick of hearing it.
KH, do you realise how ridiculous that sounds when the government is subsidizing rents that folks cannot afford to the tune of $2 billion - going on $3 billion per annum?
Do you realise how ridiculous that sounds given our emergency accommodation expenditure?
Are you aware what people can actually afford to pay in rent without suffering extreme hardship?
https://calculate.co.nz/rent-affordability-calculator.php
Not sure my rent "command scheme" - as you say - is the only answer, but I'm really pleased with it's reception thus far.
B-b-b-b-b-but Kate, subsidizing the rents ensures Landlords can borrow greater and greater sums to outbid FHB on entry level properties. What better way to stimulate the economy than to privatize the debt. Gets it off the Government's balance sheet.
Should the principles of your rent model also apply to public and private businesses. Utility companies, power, water, phone. Supermarkets and oil companies. Most of these have been around for decades and longer with old money.
No, each market requires a tailored response to regulation. But all markets require regulation.
Hope that answers your question.
That's silly with unequal rules that apply against res rental property
If you want to go the whole hog, you should require the house sales market to follow similar mark up requirements based on Purch Price.
I do not understand your point. All those markets you mention above are regulated - and all are constrained from price gouging - aside from rental accommodation, that is.
Constrained from price gouging
Are you joking. Example, In the midst of the banking enquiry, banks which already earn tremendous record profits are increasing interest rates. Particularly the floating rate despite no movement in the base which is the OCR
Above, I suggested you extend your model to the house sales market, another "unconstrained" market, where longterm holders are making unchecked super profits. If that suggestion sounds ludicrous, there is a reason for that.
The rent model based on purchase price (aka historic cost) is relatively easy to circumvent for those with longterm holdings.
So its a flawed model that will keep accountants and real estate agents busy.
I cant see why you persist with it.
No, you completely misunderstand my proposal. My rent model is not based on purchase price - it's based on a no-more-than 30% of median (gross) household income spent on rent for the district/area in which the dwelling is located, i.e., an affordability metric;
What I'm saying about purchase price is that those landlords who purchased their residential assets when prices were in line with an affordable income metric (up to 5:1 by my estimate) will remain profitable once the weekly rent maximum formula is implemented.
Those that bought over-priced assets and/or borrowed again on the unrealised capital gains on an earlier purchase, will need to sell (or make losses).
Any further questions - just ask! Happy to bring you up-to-speed with the policy proposal.
Are you saying our rental market alone is not a functioning market, or rental markets in general? Do you have any links on the research?
I've only conducted research on the NZ market - but anecdotally I understand rents are high in many Western nations. My research is unpublished, but some background to it and my regulatory proposal is summarised here;
If rents are rising then arguably the market is functioning perfectly. As you said, yield is calculated on the value of the property today not what it was bought for, or how much it costs to keep it. Welcome to the world of normalising interest rates, where money now has value, and there is no more free stuff sloshing around the system.
An investor now (for the first time in a long time) has a choice as to what to do with his/her capital - keep the property and rent it; sell it and put the funds in a term deposit paying 6.5% pa, or [say] buy Genesis shares paying 10.85% gross yield imputed [not financial advice].
Residential rents still have a long way to go to make property financially viable in the absence of capital gains. Funnily enough, I'll bet that all those that complained about investors pocketing capital gains will be the same ones complaining about high rents in the absence of capital gains. You can either have subsidised rents compensated for by capital gains, or you have capital market rents delivering a competitive yield and no capital gains. You can't have both.
If our rent goes up beyond what we can afford - we just move house. Weekly income is a hard-cap on what people can afford to pay, and there's a physical limit on the percentage of their income your tenant can pay for rent before Mazlowe's hierarchy kicks in and they simply stop paying.
Even accounting for multiple tenants in a house, in which case there are either physical or imposed constraints on the number of earners present.
Doesn't really work that way though does it. If rents are going up they are all going up so to get a cheaper house the standard of the house goes down. Throw in the cost of moving and the fact that in terms of priority spending, the rent is top of the list the same as the mortgage is top of the list. Spending just gets cut elsewhere to cover the rent increase.
So why don't all Landlords double the rent? Surely the tenant will just cut spending elsewhere to cover the increase?
What if all landlords got together and did actually double the rent ? What exactly would you do about it ? that's right live in car or caravan or someone's garage if you couldn't afford it. Rent only overtook what I was smashing my mortgage at a few years ago, plenty of room to increase rents.
I wouldn't do anything about it because I don't rent. But if all Landlords doubled the rent good luck getting it. Landlords are struggling with mortgage interest deductibility, and they've had how much notice??
All hypothetical but a collective action from landlords to increase rents by 50% would almost certainly spur some kind of government response.
And almost certainly some form of rent strike. I would even venture to suggest that the landlords would need to put some of that excess rent towards personal security.
What would you do if all tenants got together and stopped paying rent?
Boy the schadenfreude in me would love to see this happen. I'd put my hand up for a temporary gig at tenancy services to help clear the backlog, albeit as slowly as I can.
If all the landlords doubled the rent, those who can't afford the rent move out, then a landlord has a house sitting empty. Losing money.
So he thinks, Ill lower the rent to get someone in my place...
Yup, agreed. Though:
If you or a friend have the capacity to tow, cost of moving is gas + beers (our last move was $120, and we have ~5T of stuff).
Meanwhile the landlord has a week or two's empty house (which by itself outweighs the rent increase, unless regular turnover is part of your business plan).
And re: bill priorities - rent is only above food for the fed. Once people hit hunger, rent takes a back seat. I think the mortgage arrears, plus many TT cases is fairly significant proof that rent/mortgages aren't the #1 priority.
And a significant amount of the rent increases in, say, our particular house size actually reflects the increasing quality of rentals coming online - as noted earlier in the year, possibly people renting homes as they flee to Aus (I dunno)? Be interesting to see how long the scummy rentals are listed for vs. nice ones.
Zwifter- are your typing fingers operating about 10 seconds in front of your brain? You must be here for the Crack...or are you genuinely a spacey?
My mom used to say you can't get blood from a turnip. It seems quite apt for what some landlords are learning (or about to learn). People can only pay so much of their income for rent. They still need pesky things like food to be able to just survive, let alone thrive.
Ah, "thrive". Guess that depends on how you personally define that word. The Govt is currently flooding the country with people who are well used to living 4 to a bedroom. If your idea of "thrive" is to have each kid in their own room, a spare bedroom for an office or occasional guest, and two lounges then you might be in for a shock at how others feel about sharing a house amongst 12 rent paying adults, or a family of four sharing a one bedroom apartment.
Has the July REINZ data not been released yet (or did I miss it)?
Think the reinz data out tomorrow at 9am.
Hamilton rents up 8 percent for year.not too shabby!!!!!
Do you still own flats... u looking to sell or buy more?
Looking at some near hospital at the moment but it's very hard to get lending at the moment so need the yield to stack up.recently built so can get interest deductibility.would have to be at a discount of the price indication.been advised there is a lot more pain to come re interest rates staying higher for longer.just waiting for opportunities.
Higher rents means less spent into the consumer economy. Given that the renting segment typically will spend all disposable income, this is arguably negative for the economy.
The lazy way to deal with this is to import more people. More people needing more shelter should mean that rents go up even further and even less share of wallet allocated to the consumer economy. Unless they can take on more debt. Go figure about the Antipodean bubble economics master plan (Aussie is not much different to NZ in this harebrained thinking).
Of course those imported people will be seen by the bureaucrats as different segments: 1, The Peter Thiels or Chinese tycoons who the bureaucrats expect will splash their cash to trickle down to the sheeple; and 2. The indentured slaves who will work for a pittance.
The Loony Left talk of a Wealth Tax has ensured that segment 1 is now non-existent. Nobody in their right mind would be bringing significant capital into this country if there is even a whiff that it will be wealth taxed.
We are a cannibalistic bunch here in New Zealand. What a crap way to 'earn' money
What an ignorant comment.
Ignorant suggests that I don't understand it. What's your point?
My point is that you are making an ignorant statement based on no facts. “What a crap way to earn money” “cannabalistic”
You triggered there chief? Have I insulted your livelihood? 90.4% of the comments on this site are opinion based. That gives you a 98.3% chance of being called ignorant.
Not insulted, just trying to understand whether you have any facts behind your nonsense comment.
Lol, how would someone use facts to prove a figure of speech… Are you looking for evidence of cannibalism?
But I see your point Iceman, landlords do take on the responsibility and tenure of home ownership which is essentially adding value to society. Much in the same way that ticket scalpers help people who miss out on the initial sale…
Property owners with a mortgage face thousands in added costs due to the loss of interest deductibility. This will lead to the quickest increase in rents in NZ history.
The only owners who benefit are those without a mortgage. It is all being passed directly to the government and then I assume directly to motel owners.
So if you have a rental with a mortgage you need to increase rents to cover your cost increase. But if someone else has a rental without a mortgage their costs haven't changed. Why would someone rent your place over theirs?
Because the owner with debt increases to top of market band. Top of market band then becomes mid-market and property managers when they advertise for new tenants look at TradeMe and set their target rents there. I'd say most owners will carry debt because you're advised to pay off your owner occupier first, so the majority will be having to increase. If the majority were not then it wouldn't be an issue.
This matches up with chatter around the BBQ. A lot of owners are shocked at their accounting bills this year and have sent our rent increases. Most rentals, for better or worse, are usually the former family home and the owners take a set and forget stance.
So BBQs are where the state of the nation decisions are made, good to know. Tax ? Welcome to the real world. Id suggest that if you want deductibility, you get charged business rates on your loan.
Your comment re loading up the "business" with private debt to reduce your tax bill is a large part of the reason there should be no interest deductibility, its called shitting in your own nest.
Its probably not a coincidence that the rent rises in Q2 have occurred just after the provisional tax notices lol
If you have a rental without a mortgage you have numerous other investment options to consider - term deposits are paying 6.5% return for [almost] zero risk. The only advantage residential property has is that it can be leveraged (ie. purchased with borrowed money) as capital gains is the return on your portion of contributed equity. If you don't need to borrow money to buy an asset, your sole determinant will be the risk/return ratio for that asset as capital gains is the return on the total value of the asset. So someone without a mortgage would probably be better off selling and investing their funds elsewhere in less risky, higher returning investments than residential property. Its only the debt laden that are trapped in the world of residential investing, those already well off are free to invest wherever they like, many are now selling residential and buying motels!
So when National get in and change the deductibility rules then we can expect landlords to reduce rents?
Rental prices are determined by supply and demand between breakeven and the pint renters exit the market . If they drop too far then landlords would leave them empty or would sell them. If they go too high people move city or back home. Whether there is new supply depends on how attractive an investment they are. That’s it.
What this country needs is a permanent underclass that cannot afford an air ticket to Aussie or back to where they came from. That is crucial to the economic model and our prosperity.
God we're good.
You sound like the author of the 'Reserve Bank of Property' parody twitter account there JC!
You say this sarcastically, but there are some people in our society who honestly think this is a good way to see the world.
A LOT of owners won't put them up for several years going forward as their costs don't change or will scale back increases.
What gets me is we weren't exactly seeing rental decreases when interest rates were lowered and interest deductability and tax rinsing was present. Really just seems like landlords will charge the max they can get away with and if they could get more they would be getting more.
You sound surprised? This is the free market, if it’s not regulated then it’s fair game.
My previous landlord put the rent up because “that’s what similar houses are going for now on TradeMe”. Was rather satisfying to hand them final notice shortly afterwards.
Not surprised at all, rents basically always go up. What's irritating is people blaming this primarily on the removal of negative gearing when they probably would have gone up by the same amount anyway. E.g Australia, all the tax incentives and advantages in the world yet their rents are going up even faster than ours.
When there is a threat of rent control in the air (like the Greens want) then landlords have to keep pace with market rent, as otherwise they may find themselves permanently being forced to offer lower than market rents, even if the tenant vacates and a new one moves in. Nobody can afford to "be kind" these days.
“So when National get in and change the deductibility rules then we can expect landlords to reduce rents?”
Most likely not but will stop/slow down the need to raise. The removal of interest deductibility has proven to allow rent to catch up to market level or above, still not sure if it was intentionally done by the current government…..
Quite possibly. If NACT restoring interest deductibility means that investors pile back into the rental market by buying existing dwellings again, then the flood of new rentals on to the market will reduce rents, as per the normal rules of demand and supply. Also, the value of interest deductibility for new builds has been built into the price of those new builds, so restoring equality with existing dwellings will see that premium disappear, making new builds cheaper, and if they are cheaper to buy, investors can rent them for lower rent as their holding costs will be lower.
New Zealand experienced a net migration gain of 86,600 people in the year to the end of June 2023, close to the record influx of 91,700 seen in the year to March 2020, according to Stats NZ’s latest estimates.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/132737929/net-immigration-back-near-re….
I thought everyone was heading to Aus?
It estimated there was a net loss of 34,800 New Zealand citizens in the year to the end of June, which was the highest outflow since 2013, but that was dwarfed by an all-time record net gain of 121,600 non-New Zealand citizens.
Customs has us up 99,122 1/7/22-31/6/23. Add another +50k for this month (ski bunnies?) and there are 150k more people here right now compared to July last year. I wonder how much of the rent increase can be attributed to AirBnB picking up?
Note we're were down 1/Jan-1/Jul, and a lot of that increase was when the borders re-opened (+>120k Oct-Dec '22).
Add another +50k for this month (ski bunnies?)
Ya reckon? Aussie skiers? The value proposition for NZ snow and terrain doesn't make much sense to me.
Dunno. But it was school holidays also, so be interesting to see the stats for August.
Most of the influx would be due to the Fifa World Cup.
Any business losing customers at this pace to competition would try and fix their systems, products or management practice.
That being said, the government hasn't even bothered to crunch some rough numbers on who's leaving and what intellectual and/or financial capital they're taking along, probably scared of the bad press the results might bring up.
Instead, Chippy and co are too busy celebrating the fact that more migrants are moving to NZ, knowing full well through multiple studies by the PC that incoming migrants are generally lower skilled.
Of the 145,000 people on work visas currently in the country, only 12,000 are Essential Skills visas. 10k are RSE workers, 27k are working holiday makers. 24,000 are family members of workers.
There were 108,000 immigrants on work visas in Oct, and there are currently 145,000 people on work visas in the country (this includes family members). The numbers dont add up, unless migrants are departing the country almost as fast as they are arriving, as that 121,000 have not been added to the 108,000, only 37,000.
Where are the people linking the passenger customs data saying that our population is decreasing ? Lol
Still here. Until we get past the 12 month period of the border reopening (Sept), all Stats Dept estimates are bogus. March - June had negative migration. July had positive - but as noted above, was this just Aussie school holidays, ski season and the Fifa world cup? I suppose we find out in September.
The Government’s war on landlords won’t be helping.
Tenant tax.
Two families sharing one rental is becoming more common. More people and less available properties in desirable locations/school zones. $350 per room?
Expect to see more rent increases in the coming 12 months. Record immigration with the majority heading to Auckland initially. Council rate increases. All pointing to upward pressure. Especially when most landlords are making less than 5% gross with little hope of capital gains in the short to medium term.
Just rented out two properties in Hibiscus Coast. Over fifty applications in 12 hours on Trademe.
What sort of a business can operate on 5% GP and is reliant on asset price increase to fill the hole. NZs biggest casino, the house doesnt always win...
Along with rising rates, this is what you get when you have an anti landlord incompetent govt. Cue interest deduction etc.
Looks more like population gain weighing on infrastructure plus increased incomes ( low to middle ) being diverted to the wealthy.
Nope, I’m putting up rents by $20 a week, which is just passing on costs. And ofcourse we needed more people, there was a labour shortage…
Golden words from across the ditch (relevant to us as well):
The truth of it is this. The corporate diversity propaganda of Australia’s politico-housing complex has absorbed the fake left. Or perhaps it is the other way around.
Either way, the politico-housing complex is designed to achieve just one outcome: rising property prices. It does not care how. It does not care who gets hurt along the way. It does not care about the nation or individual.
It is the number one force of production in the Australian economy, and its number one tool for achieving its goal is mass immigration.
Class war is as timeless as wealth and power, and the fake left is its most hateful hypocrite.
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2023/08/fake-left-evicts-hated-working…
Yes, we seem to be returning to a sort of feudal system - the natural order.
I really hope some geniuses build a miraculous AGI which slaps us around and takes control. It surely can't be worse than having human "leaders".
It also comes at a time when the number of new homes being completed in Auckland is at a record high, with 1742 new dwellings completed in Auckland in the month of June
Well, there's your answer there. Most new builds are sold to investors, so a record number of completions means a record number of new rentals hitting the market, and the rent for a brand new build is higher than the rent for an older townhouse, flat or apartment. Every time an older (cheaper) dwelling is sold to a FHB and replaced by a brand new build, the average rent goes up.
The loss of cheap rentals for low income families, as they are replaced by more expensive dwellings for professional singles/couples seems to be yet another "unintended consequence" of Labour's misguided housing policies. But don't worry, those that can't afford to rent a brand new house can just go on the waiting list for Kainga Ora to build one for them for free.
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