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Trade Me listings show rental supply outstripping demand in most cities except Auckland. Your experience?

Property
Trade Me listings show rental supply outstripping demand in most cities except Auckland. Your experience?

Listings and enquiries on Trade Me Property show demand from tenants for rental properties across New Zealand is lagging behind a rise in supply, except for in central Auckland, Trade Me Property said.

Supply turned the corner in the last quarter of 2010 after a period of decline and was now taking off, Trade Me Property head Brendon Skipper said. Rental property listings supply rose 11% nationally in the last quarter from a year ago. Demand nationally fell 1% from a year ago.

“Over the past three months in cities like Tauranga, Dunedin, Hamilton and Wellington we’ve seen the number of properties up for rent outstripping demand from prospective tenants," Skipper said.

However, supply in Auckland was tight and down 13% in the last quarter, while demand had risen 18%.

“Anyone who has been reading media coverage in recent months knows Auckland is tough if you’re looking for a place to rent at the moment. Average weekly rent across the city is up 7% on a year ago, and it’s inevitable that will continue to rise if demand stays crazy and supply stays low," Skipper said.

Tenants in central Auckland may instead look for homes in Manukau and North Shore where supply was up 10% and 6% respectively.

"With demand down in the past quarter, landlords in those cities would undoubtedly welcome interest from potential tenants," Skipper said.

In Wellington and Dunedin, the traditional New Year surge in demand was over with both regions now in a position of oversupply.

“Students at Victoria and Otago, and public sector workers from the capital have found their flats and settled in for the year, so in these cities landlords have a harder job filling their properties than three months ago," Skipper said.

In Christchurch, the earthquake had left a limited number of properties available for rent and anything available was being tenanted quickly. The number of enquiries from prospective tenants had increased 7% on a year ago, but there was little evidence landlords were taking advantage of the disaster.

“Any vultures must be few and far between because although average weekly rent has gone up 5% compared with a year ago, Christchurch is only slightly ahead of the national average of 3%. To put this in perspective, that lags the entire Auckland region, Palmerston North and Rotorua.”

 

% change: Q1 2011 vs. Q1 2010
(excludes apartments)

Area

Supply

Rent per week

Demand

Auckland City

 - 13%

 7%

 18%

Manukau City

 10%

 8%

 - 4%

North Shore City

 6%

 8%

 - 1%

Waitakere City

 1%

 6%

 10%

Christchurch City

 0%

 5%

 7%

Dunedin

 9%

 2%

 - 11%

Hamilton

 20%

 4%

 - 11%

Wellington City

 17%

 - 2%

 - 8%

Lower Hutt

 16%

 - 0%

 - 15%

National

 11%

 3%

 - 1%

 
Also see our interarctive chart here showing median rents across New Zealand, as measured by the Tenancy bond service of the Department of Building and Housing.
 

No chart with that title exists.

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19 Comments

Which ditch.....!

You wanna job...you can jump the teeny weeny one and rush to Auckland...or go the whole hog and head for aus.

All else is recession ...the Chch rebuild will be slow as to start and riddled with trouble as the bureaucrats strive to bugger the process with red tape and the heritage lovers push to get their brick and rubble facades back where they belong...walls of shite waiting to kill.

Inflation will get ahead of Bollard and compound the building sector problems. Already the freighting charges have shot higher. Somebody in Japan will buy a pack of NZ export Rhubarb and that will be a signal for timber prices to double....to be followed by steel, concrete, labour, glass, aluminium, gib,paint, nails, plastics and then the councils will shove their fees and charges up to ensure even fewer people do home starts.

Yes this is NZ...a great economy...not. 

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And 'Auckland' in this case is only  the central area. Very limited area seeing demand outstrip supply.

I'm born and raised a Jaffa, I don't see Auckland as just the central area, though that is where I  have lived last 15 years on and off.  I grew up on the Northshore, which is basically sprawling burbs that are 5 - 15 minutes from downtown Auckland off peak.

"Yes this is NZ...a great economy...not."

It's great if you're rich, Smiley Wavey and his mates are handing everything over to you.

As for everyone else "Let them eat cat food!".

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Wolly; It is not inflation. It is finally we can charge what we want to.

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To charge what you want to..so much fun screwing insurance companies..what can they do...why would they care...just hike the premiums some more...oh they will put the work out to tender...... and take which price when all the prices are the same...funny thing that. !

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Wolly, Civil Defence have already systematically eradicated most of the heritage without given owners an option.

It's a complete farce that the Government spend $2.5m to save the Birdcage in Freemans Bay, yet can't scrap anything together for buildings iconic buildings like the Old Girls High on Cramner Square which is being bulldozed.

The fact is that many brick buildings did better than their concrete block or reinforced concrete replacements.  A huge number of brand new houses lost brick or stone veneer walls, often from second floors, gable ends or chimneys, all of this brick and stone work is just as ready to kill as any other, yet the building code allows it.

Some heritage could easily be reinforced, others could easily have walls deconstructed and rebuilt, instead an easy bulldoze mentality is sweeping through with the authorities believing they can build a better city - but for who and with whose money?

 

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Perhaps the 'King Charles' approach is best CJ...the codes were not up to the job...brick walls have no lateral strength worth mentioning...reinforced concrete slab does..but badly designed and poorly built it's still crap. Facades of fancy brickwork can be faked in resin and bolted in place. Ditto stonework. CD are a law unto themselves when the muzzle is off.

You seem to want govt (taxpayer) money but not govt policy on what it is spent on.

 

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I don't won't govt money Wolly, just my insurance payouts - it's not my fault that the govt has underwritten them.

Just because brick walls are broken on one or two storey heritage buildings doesn't mean they should be immediately condemned.  In Britain they routinely deconstruct buildings and rebuild them.  No effort is being made to conserve anything here.

Of course brick walls are cannot take lateral loads, but nor can concrete slab on column high rises - which has been known for 30 years, yet these are the buildings that killed the vast majority of people on Feb 22.

Concrete block structures failed just as spectacularly as brick ones.  Look at the hundreds of modern block garages lying in a pile, or the 1960s and 70s flats crumpled on the ground.  Concrete block walls with a single reinforced tie beam at the top and in the corners very nearly performed as badly as unreinforced brick.

Unsurprisingly double brick walls were totally useless, but triple brick and thicker walls without reinforcing did remarkably well, but that doesn't mean they are safe.

Why would anyone now buy or use a pre 1980 structural concrete block building, a structural brick building or a pre 1980 multi-level slab on column building (or a 3 level timber framed building with basement garage for that matter) that has not been seismically upgraded? 

Like leaky buildings, will this be another 80,000 homes needing to be taken out of the market?

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Clearly you are having trouble getting your insurance payout...why?

I think you will find the two modern structure that failed and killed so many were engineering disasters to start with...the columns would have been too few and the reinforcing link between them and the slabs grossly inadequate. In effect there was bugger all bracing. That some brick structures did not collapse does not mean they are safe because it is now clear the ground under the cbd is shite. Another shallow quake east of the city will see a repeat with a new load of collapsing brick walls.

You are going to have to accept as fact that brick is only suitable on garden paths. Most of the buildings appear to be nothing but wooden boxes hiding behind the facades...why would you want to rebuild rubbish. Who would pay to do your deconstruction reconstruction tricks...?

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Interesting indeed. So Olly Newland is right again. Well done Olly.

The point is we are not one homogenous country. There are 3 regions, Auckland, Rest of North Island, and South Island(Mainland).

It seems to me this is the result of migration effects:

NZ residents are leaving for Aussie from all regions, probably at a similar rate.

Immigrants to New Zealand mainly move to Auckland, some of them later move on.

So there is a net loss of people to Aussie in the regions and a net gain of people to Auckland.

Seems plausible in theory, do the figures support it?

 

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Bernard, where is the link to the original piece this is based on?

The links are the key reason I like your site. I can follow a story back, unlike the silly sods at the newspaper sites who think a Reuters story is somehow best transmitted as Special Knowledge only available to initiates of the secret order of Very Clever People.

I wanted to find the figures for Nelson, where I live (and rent).

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This can't be right man, my property dreams are crumbling. There is always demand for property because of net migration, and everyone just wants to live in NZ because its such a ncie country. This stokes demand to a point where even kiwis can't afoord a home, but whats wrong with that? As long as we are getting paid we don't care, ALL GOOD

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This report from Trademe adds numbers to my observations as a property investor in various locations in New Zealand.

I'm not seeing weak demand anywhere at all, but I am seeing the provincial cities I lease property in having relatively plenty of houses available. It's a story of good tenant demand but still plenty of house supply.

Auckland though, I have lots of demand and comments from would-be tenants that "there is not a lot of houses available" The story in Auckland is good tenant demand and not many houses available.

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Auckland has always being a city apart in the NZ economic context. For all intents and purposes it's like a separate country, a city state if you will. It's just such a pity that the rest of the country (excluding the rural sector) doesn't perform at the same level.

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I propose the "Hickey Law" of property markets:

The grumpier Bernard gets about property the more healthy and profitable the market.

Thus far, my observations lead me to believe this is an iron law of property markets!

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I will now use "Hickey Law" analysis as part of my due diligence process.

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"Hickey Law" means I charge clients more when Hickey is grumpier.

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I've been watching the same phenomenon here in the Bay of Plenty.  Most rentals ever- I've never seen so many for rent- nice homes too.  Same build-up of inventory.  Few property investors understand that rents sometimes DO go down, while their mortgage payments stay the same. 

 

Many people are living on the edge, financially.  They took out mortgages with both partners working, and now, in many places, one of those partners is losing his or her job, putting tremendous stress on them.  At the same time you have scared buyers and renters, looking for every way to cut costs. 

It's not a formula for rising real estate demand. 

The leaky homes issie only throws more confusion into the mix. 

My prediction- you will see mortgage rates go lower and lower, until they stop and do 180 degrees, taking rates higher faster and faster.  Money keeps shifting, looking for a home- whether it's towards to the US Dollar or the Yen, it ssems to change by the week, but it is not stable, nonetheless. 

If we have a huge strengthening of the NZDollar or the Aus Dollar, that will be a huge weight on real estate. 

Bernard, your website still could use improvement.  The articles with the most comments still aren't easily findable, or stuck to the first page.  If they need to stay on the front page for weeks, so be it.  It sucks. 

Also, your site is not searchable by contributor name- making it difficult to to find your last post- that sucks too. 

 

 

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I think the rent is pretty cheep now. 15 years ago when I just come to NZ the rent cost me 50% WEEKLY INCOME, but now the the rent is less then my 2 hours income.

I cannot remember where is the stats, but the stats said now cost about 20% of average income and year 2000 the rent cost 26% of average income.

 

 

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If anyone has been watching trends in the property market,...sales what has been resold when at what margines....  good rentals are selling like hot cakes...Speculators and investors with a bit of sus who balled out  in  2006 before the preverbial hit the ...are now buying up large. Im partular rentals sols off cheap in 2007/2008, that where picked up by investors, trow 20K at at and sit.

These are now up for sale again, and also need a bit of a quick flick to bring upto rental standards

The small building and supllimentary trades have been doing quite well in Auckland out of this.

Another thing is many of these investors are picking up are 'low income' or 1st home buyers from 10 /15 yrs back, and have/are moving up from the 200K braket into the high 400K plus.....because these homes are still selling well below what they where serveral yrs ago..These are great buys for investors as they have good garages, out buildings suitable to turn into a 2nd permited rental on the property.

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