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

Dunedin’s rental property market is mostly comprised of houses, with much smaller shares of the market accounted for by apartments and flats. Of the 545 properties recently for rent in Dunedin, 448 have been houses (82%), with only 56 apartments (10%) and 41 flats (8%).

The largest market for houses is Glenleith/Roslyn/Belleknowes (56), followed by Kew/St Clair/St Kilda East (45), and Musselburgh/Vauxhall/ Peninsula (44). By contrast, there have only been 12 houses for rent in Dunedin Rural, 15 in Ravensbourne/Mt Mera/Port Chalmers, and 18 in North East Valley/ Pine Hill.

Central Dunedin has a decent number of houses for rent (39) lately, but that represents only 37% of activity in that market. It is a bigger area for flats (17) and apartments (50). North East Valley/ Pine Hill is the other area for apartments, while flats can also be found in Kew/ St Clair/St Kilda East, North Dunedin/ Woodhaugh, and University/Maori Hill.

Houses By Bedroom

Dunedin’s market is quite diverse in terms of the spread of the number of bedrooms across different parts of the city. About half of its rental houses have three bedrooms, roughly 20% have two bedrooms, and 15% apiece for four and five-bedrooms.

For five-bedroom properties, the key markets are North Dunedin/Woodhaugh (31, or 86% of all houses in the area), University/Maori Hill (26, or 62% of houses in the area), and Central Dunedin (10). At the other end of the spectrum, a key market for two-bedroom rental houses is South Dunedin/St Kilda.

In the four-bedroom category, the largest markets are Glenleith/Roslyn/ Belleknowes and Kew/St Clair/St Kilda East. Important areas for three-bedroom rentals are Dunedin, Musselburgh/ Vauxhall/Peninsula and Glenleith/ Roslyn/Belleknowes. There are high concentrations of three bedrooms (as a percentage of the rental house stock) in Kenmure/Mornington (65%), Mosgiel (59%), and Sunnyvale/ Abbotsford/Burnside.

Rent And Yield

By matching average value to rent we can look at gross yield for three-bedroom houses in each area. Median weekly rents for three-bedroom houses in Dunedin range from $380 in Ravensbourne/Mt Mera/Port Chalmers up to $492 in University/Maori Hill. South Dunedin/St Kilda has the cheapest three-bedroom houses, with a median value of $413,400, compared to the highest in University/Maori Hill, where the median value is more than $724,000. University/Maori Hill also has the lowest three-bedroom house yield (3.5%), with South Dunedin/St Kilda the highest (5.7%). With most suburbs across Dunedin yielding at least 4% on three bedroom rental houses, the figures are appealing by national standards. Rental growth has been solid in recent years.