Advertised housing rents were down 3.1% overall in January compared to a year earlier, according to Trade Me Property.
The national median asking rent for residential rental properties advertised on the website was $620 a week in January, unchanged from December last year, but down $20 a week (-3.1%) compared to January last year.
The five main urban regions - Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Wellington and Canterbury, plus Hawke's Bay, Taranaki and Marlborough, all posted annual declines in their median rents. Northland, Nelson/Tasman and Otago, posted annual declines. See the chart below for the full regional figures.
The biggest annual decline was in the Wellington region, where the median advertised rent was down $50 a week (-7.4%) in January compared to a year earlier.
"Nationally we saw tenant demand spike by 41% compared with December, but this was met with a 45% surge in the number of properties for rent," Trade Me property spokesperson Casey Wylde said.
"This balance between supply and demand is a major contributor to the current pricing stability," she said.
5 Comments
Ohhhhh dear.
Landlorders will be loving this.
Falling rents, as all costs increase markedly. Winning.
Now also the spectre of higher embedded inflation and the higher mortgage rates, that then must applied in the near future.
The next 10 years of aging boomers selling up, will bring lower and lower profits, as the pressure cooker selling pressure increases.
Leveraged landlorders will need very long snorkels, as many thousands will be further underwater and needing many hundreds a week to topup, the worst timed soeculative bets in NZs economic history, thats gone very lemon sour.......
Actually interest costs have dropped over the last couple of years. Significantly.
And they're still on the way down as a large proportion of investors have interest rates locked in, not yet at the bottom of the market. I'm looking forward to next fixed term renewal later this year, likely bringing another 0.5-0.7% drop. For us, that's literally thousands of extra dollars in the pocket from 2 properties.
These huge drops in interest rates over the last years have more than offset any other related cost rises, to the extent that the last couple of years have been the most profitable in our long term holding of our (quite highly leveraged) portfolio.
All this talk of doom and gloom, is, well, a bit overly doomy and gloomy in my view.
Oh and thanks. At least now I understand the term 'D&G merchant' which I've seen in these comments sections before and was wondering about ;)
Oh the humanity.
Buying property in NZ is no longer a good investment decision. The fundamentals which did make it a good decision for the last 50 years have now dissipated and I can not see them coming back
1. Capital gain is no longer a factor.
2 Some form of Tax on Capital gain is a given down the track.
3. Rents are falling.
4. Costs are rising.
5. Supply is exceeding demand.
6. The Quality of the new builds and materials used are low.
7. Unpleasant aesthetics around of new subdivisions, appear cheap, nasty and crammed.
8. The price paid for the end product is not compatible.
9. Declining population.
10. Low wage economy.
11. Lack of infrastructure in moving people to centre's of work.
12. Increasing congestion.
13. New developments are well away from the transport hubs.
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