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

Lower Hutt’s rental market is dominated by houses, as tends to be the case in most parts of the country. Of the 359 properties recently on the rental market, 279 (or 78%) have been houses, with 60 flats (17%), and 20 apartments (5%). Epuni/Avalon has been Lower Hutt’s largest market for rental houses lately, with 65 properties, followed by Western Hills/Haywards (39), and Taita/Naenae (35). In terms of the concentration of houses amongst the rental stock, the highest figures (all 100%) have been in Wainuiomata, Stokes Valley, and Eastern Bays, in addition to Western Hills/
Haywards.

Looking at flats, Lower Hutt’s largest rental market has recently been Taita/Naenae (13), followed by Moera/Waiwhetu (12), and Petone/ Esplanade (10). Moera/Waiwhetu also has a relatively high concentration of flats in its rental stock (41%), alongside Petone West/Alicetown (35%). The most apartments for rent have been in Hutt Central/Waterloo (15), which is 29% of recent properties.

House Size, By Bedroom Count

Looking specifically at houses (279 properties), 62% of Lower Hutt’s recently available dwellings for rent have been three bedrooms, with 30% in the two-bedroom category, and 8% with four bedrooms. None have had either one or five bedrooms. It’s common across the country for rental houses to be towards the smaller end of the spectrum, rather than being larger four or five-bedroom stock.

In the two-bedroom category, the largest markets lately have been Epuni/Avalon (19), Western Hills/Haywards (17), and Hutt Central/Waterloo (12). Eastern Bays, however, has had the highest concentration of two-bedroom properties in its recently available house rental stock, at 45%. Four-bedroom rental houses have only been available in three suburbs, with the most (11) in Epuni/Avalon.

In the key, three-bedroom category, Epuni/Avalon (35), Western Hills/ Haywards (22), Taita/Naenae (21), and Wainuiomata (20) have been the largest markets lately. However, Petone West/ Alicetown stands out here, with 100% of its recently available rental house stock having three bedrooms.

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 Lower Hutt range from $500 in Wainuiomata up to $650 in Petone/Esplanade. There is a wider range for the median values of three-bedroom houses, from $553,900 in Wainuiomata, up to $904,250 in Hutt Central/Waterloo.

Consistent with that, there is a relatively wide range for gross rental yields on three-bedroom houses in Lower Hutt, from more than 4.5% in Stokes Valley, Wainuiomata, and Taita/Naenae, down to only about 3.5% in Hutt Central/Waterloo.

Stokes Valley has recently seen the strongest rise in weekly rents for three-bedroom houses (11.1% annually), but many others have been solid too – including Hutt Central/Waterloo (9.6%), Western Hills/Haywards (9.1%), and Petone/Esplanade (8.3%).