{"id":377077,"date":"2026-04-13T08:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T08:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/377077\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T08:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T08:40:08","slug":"the-gentrified-suburbs-where-renters-are-disappearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/377077\/","title":{"rendered":"The &#8216;gentrified&#8217; suburbs where renters are disappearing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  [&amp;_p]:tit-sub-xl tit-sub-xl md:[&amp;_p]:d-tit-sub-xl md:d-tit-sub-xl mb-[1.3rem]\">New Zealand&#8217;s recent building boom has changed the make-up of some suburbs around the country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">By Susan Edmunds <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/business\/592159\/money-gentrified-suburbs-where-renters-are-disappearing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">of RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Census data shows the number of households who do not own their own homes has dropped in the past decade.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Some suburbs have experienced even more dramatic changes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Auckland&#8217;s Penrose, for example, was 56.7% renters in 2013 and 52.5% in 2018, but had dropped to 27.8% by 2023. It has a relatively small number of homes, but the number more than doubled from 201 in 2013 to 453 in 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Ruakura in Hamilton had a similarly large increase in owners. In 2013, it was 50% renting households, but that dropped to 27.6% by 2023. It went from 84 homes in 2013 to 729 in 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Wharewaka in Taup\u014d also featured, with renting population dropped over 10 years from 32% to 12.2%, as the number of homes increased from 309 to 639.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Hobsonville, Auckland, had a renting population drop from 43.8% in 2013 to 24.8%, as the number of homes ballooned from 576 to 4956.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Simplicity chief economist Shamubeel Eaqub said new developments had changed the character of suburbs around the city.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;All the people living in those places tend to be owner-occupiers,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We&#8217;re building more homes and more people are getting into homeownership \u2013 I think that&#8217;s a good thing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;[Places like Penrose] have gentrified&#8230; the wealthy suburbs are pushing further and further out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;Mangere Bridge, people used to look down on it. Now, it&#8217;s a perfectly desirable suburb, great location right next to the water.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">He said the opposite seemed to be happening in places like Queenstown, where the renting population was growing. Stonefields in Auckland, Lake Hayes Queenstown, and Goodwood Heights and Sunnynook in Auckland had strong increases in the renting population.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Stonefields went from 12.5% to 28.9% renters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Cotality chief economist Kelvin Davidson said loan-to-value rules, which had an exemption that meant people buying new properties did not have to meet the same deposit requirements, had pushed buyers to new builds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;Those sorts of properties have been in demand from buyers, because \u2013 for example \u2013 they can get around the LVR rules.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;Particularly when Auckland housing affordability was really stretched, a way to buy a house in Auckland was to get a townhouse, because they&#8217;re exempt from LVRs. They&#8217;re cheaper, anyway, than standalone houses.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">He said places such as Marshland in Christchurch, where renters dropped from more than 27% to 11.3%, had seen the same effect.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Davidson said people who bought the new houses may have vacated other rental properties that tenants could move into.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;All else equal, the owner-occupier rate has gone up in Penrose,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s potentially because people used to be renting there and then they&#8217;ve been able to buy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;The houses don&#8217;t disappear. Possibly there&#8217;s been some people &#8216;pushed out&#8217;, but those people who pushed them out had to come from somewhere and that&#8217;s a house that&#8217;s freed up somewhere else.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;Kiwi society, the home ownership dream, all of that, a lot of people would probably view these stats as pretty positive in these suburbs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;The owner-occupier rate has improved and that&#8217;s seen as desirable in New Zealand.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand&#8217;s recent building boom has changed the make-up of some suburbs around the country. By Susan Edmunds&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2917,42,43,814,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-377077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-cost-of-living","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-property","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}