The Data

Rental data is sourced from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment based on rental bonds lodged. This data is supplied to us grouped into geographic areas based on statistical area units used by Statistics NZ for the census and as a result do not always match well with common usage suburb names.

The rental data for each area is matched to property price information from our database to determine property prices and therefore yield. The yield is calculated as the annualised rental income divided by the median property value calculated using our E-Valuer.

Market Composition

Central Christchurch’s rental market is dominated by houses, with broadly even shares for apartments and flats. Of the 928 properties recently on the market, 517 have been houses (56%), with 206 flats (22%) and 205 apartments (22%).

Riccarton is the largest market for rental houses (93), followed by Sydenham/Waltham (79), and Linwood/ Phillipstown (65). However, the largest concentrations of houses amongst all properties recently on the rental market have been in Sockburn/Upper Riccarton (100%), Fendalton/Strowan/Bryndwr (90%), and Ilam/Westburn (84%). Linwood/Phillipstown has recently had the most flats on the rental market (54), as well as the highest concentration (37%), alongside Merivale/St Albans West (37%).

Addington is another area with a high concentration (35%) of flats amongst its rental properties. Avon Loop/Christchurch East is the largest apartment market (89), although Christchurch Central/Hagley has a higher concentration (84%).

House Size, By Bedroom Count

About 40% of the recently available houses for rent have been two bedrooms, with another 38% having three bedrooms. It’s been about 10% apiece for four and five-bedroom properties.

In the two-bedroom category, the largest market for rental houses has recently been Sydenham/Waltham (41), followed by Riccarton (37). However, the largest concentrations have been found in

Addington and Merivale/St Albans West, both at 56%. For three-bedroom houses recently up for rent, again Riccarton (34) and Sydenham/Waltham (33) feature at the top. In terms of concentration,

Addington features in the three-bedroom house category (44%). Meanwhile, the most four-bedroom houses recently up for rent have been in Fendalton/Strowan/Bryndwr (16), followed by Riccarton (13). Sockburn/ Upper Riccarton (20) has been the largest market recently for five-bedroom rental houses.

Rent And Yield

By matching average value to rent we can look at gross yield for threebedroom houses in each area.

Median weekly rents for threebedroom houses in Central Christchurch are in a relatively tight bunch from $400 in Linwood/Phillipstown up to $500 in Fendalton/Strowan/Bryndwyr.

However, there is a much wider variation in the values for these properties, from a median of $372,550 in Linwood/ Phillipstown to $879,550 in Fendalton/ Strowan/Bryndwyr.

Consistent with that, gross rental yields for three-bedroom houses also differ quite a lot. Merivale/St Albans West and Fendalton/Strowan/Bryndwyr are both around the 3.0% mark, while

Addington and Linwood/Phillipstown are much higher in the vicinity of 5.5-6.0%. Rental trends for three-bedroom houses across Central Christchurch have been a little patchy in the past year, with areas such as Merivale/St Albans West (-6.3%) and Riccarton (-3.4%) seeing falls, but Addington (4.4%) and Sockburn/Upper Riccarton (8.9%) experiencing growth.