The Data

Rental data is sourced from the Ministry of Building, Innovation and Employment (formerly the Department of Building and Housing) based on rental bonds lodged. This rental 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 house 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 house value calculated using our E-valuer.

Market Composition

The rental property market across New Plymouth is predominantly made up of houses, with much smaller shares of flats and apartments. Of the 321 properties recently on the market, 256 are houses (80%), with 34 flats (11%), and 31 apartments. It’s very common across the country for houses to be the dominant property type in the rental sector.

The largest sub-market for rental houses is Outer New Plymouth, with 154 properties, followed by 50 in New Plymouth Central/Moturoa, 33 in Waitara/Inglewood, and 19 in Rural New Plymouth. The latter has the highest concentration of houses though (100% of its rental stock), with New Plymouth Central/Moturoa the lowest (houses represent 68% of the stock in that sub-market).

The most flats are to be found in Outer New Plymouth (19), while New Plymouth Central/Moturoa (16) and Outer New Plymouth (15) are pretty close in terms of number of apartments.

House Size, By Bedroom Count

Now looking at the 256 rental houses on the market in New Plymouth, none have only one bedroom and nor do any have five bedrooms. The largest concentration (60%, or 154) is in the three-bedroom bracket, the same as many other parts of the country. About 25% of New Plymouth’s rental house stock has two bedrooms, and the other 15% is in the four-bedroom bracket.

The most three -bedroom rental houses (95) are in Outer New Plymouth, roughly 62% of that sub-market’s rental house stock. New Plymouth Central/ Moturoa has 32 three-bedroom rental houses, and Waitara/Inglewood has 18. The largest sub-market for two-bedroom rental houses is Outer New Plymouth (35
properties), followed by New Plymouth Central/Moturoa (18). Rural New Plymouth has no two-bedroom rental houses on the market.

In the four-bedroom bracket, the most (24) are in Outer New Plymouth, followed by Rural New Plymouth (10). New Plymouth Central/Moturoa has no four bedroom rental houses on the market.

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 New Plymouth vary from $360 in Waitara/Inglewood up to $430 in New Plymouth Central/Moturoa.

Both Rural New Plymouth and Outer New Plymouth are closer to the $400 mark. There is wider variation in median values for three-bedroom houses, from $333,000 in Waitara/Inglewood, up to about $485,000 in Outer New Plymouth.

That results in a range for gross rental yields of the mid-4%’s for Outer New Plymouth and Rural New Plymouth, and the mid-5%’s for New Plymouth Central/Moturoa and Waitara/Inglewood. Even in the mid-4%’s, however, yields are still attractive compared to other parts of the country.

Indeed, they look even better in Rural New Plymouth, where rental growth over the past year has also been strong (11.4%). New Plymouth Central/Moturoa has seen strong rental growth too.