Market rent explained
Market rent is the amount a landlord might reasonably expect to receive, and a tenant might reasonably expect to pay, for a tenancy. It needs to be similar to the rent charged for similar properties in similar areas.
If a landlord charges significantly higher rent than the market rent, a tenant can apply to the Tenancy Tribunal to ask for the rent to be reduced.
About our market rent information
The market rent tool shows bond information for properties where bonds have been lodged in the six months being reported on. It is a useful guide for landlords and tenants but should not be used alone to determine the market rent of any property.
The data shown is for non-government owned properties that we have information on. It should not be used for any purpose other than as an indication of the non-government rental market based on bonds lodged.
How to read the market rent results
The total bond in the green box includes all bonds. The 'active bonds' column in the data for each dwelling type only includes current bonds in that 6 month time period.
The lower, median and upper quartile weekly rent figures in the data about each dwelling type are worked out from bonds that were lodged in the 6 month time period. If there were a small amount of bonds lodged in that six month time period the figures for each quartile of that dwelling type (eg, 2 bedroom house) may be similar.
The market rent regions are based on suburbs in the New Zealand Address Dataset (NZAD).
The weekly rent figures are subject to rounding.
Dwelling type definitions
House/Townhouse: A self-contained property, usually a building with land.
Apartment: A property with self-contained areas (eg, apartments or units) and shared areas (eg, lifts or driveways).
Boarding House room: A boarding house room is a separately rented room with shared facilities in a building intended for 6 people or more.
Room: A room that is rented separately with shared facilities in a building intended for less than 6 people.
Bedsit/Flat: Part of a subdivided building, or a building which is independent of the primary residence of a property (eg, a sleep-out).
Recent changes to the tool
In June 2021, the data in the tool was changed so that it doesn’t report on the most recent month, e.g. June’s market rent tool information does not include May’s data.
Why this change was made
This is a change from our previous updates where we reported until the end of the previous month.
By removing the most recent month of data we are able to provide a more complete and accurate picture of all bonds lodged by tenancy start date.
This is because the most recent months’ data is incomplete. This is due to the time taken between a bond being lodged (under tenancy legislation, landlords have up to 23 working days to lodge the bond with Tenancy Services) and the details being recorded in the database.
As more data subsequently comes in, the key metrics about the rental market, such as volume of activity and rent prices, revise considerably. Using this most recent incomplete information can cause incorrect conclusions to be made about changes in the rental market.
Rental bond data
A selection of raw rental bond data from January 1993 is also available. You can use this for your own analysis free of charge.
Copyright, disclaimer and use of market rent data
Market Rent data is Crown copyright and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand License(external link).
Please provide a link to this page if you reproduce or publish this data.
Tenancy Services accepts no liability for use of this data other than for the purpose referred to above, nor does it accept liability for errors whether or not due to negligence on the part of Tenancy Services or its employees.
Last updated: 09 September 2024
