Flood of renters seek flat
The modest two-bedroom flat tucked away behind Wellington Hospital is nothing spectacular but that hasn’t stopped it getting thousands of views and more than 100 inquiries online.
It is semi-detached, has ceiling and below-floor insulation, single glazing, and comes unfurnished other than whiteware.
The Newtown rental has received 3042 views and 123 inquiries in a little over a week of being listed on Trade Me, the majority flooding in during the first two days.
According to property managers, that level of demand is becoming the norm.
Lydia Deakin, who manages the flat for Royal Property Management, said this year was the hottest she had seen the Wellington rental market, with many desperate to lock down properties quickly.
Her phone had been ringing off the hook with hopefuls asking how their application process was going.
It is not only students feeling the pressure; Deakin said young professionals were also struggling.
Many were offering more money to secure the property. ‘‘We often turn that down. ‘‘They’re often the tenants you don’t want.
‘‘They’ve often got something they are trying to hide or have bad rental history.’’
The highest payer was also often the most demanding, Deakin said, expecting everything to be fixed immediately.
Last year the two-bedroom flat went for $520, this year it is going for $560.
That bump was more or less the norm in the city, with median weekly rents sitting at $520 in December, up $35 from 2016.
Another two-bedroom Newtown property received 118 inquiries within two days, and a third was taken down after only a day after it attracted 55 applications. Viewings limited Harvic property manager Colin Morgan said landlords were being forced to limit the number of viewings and often it came down to first-come-first-served.
The lack of supply was the worst Morgan had seen during his 20 years in the industry.
With many applicants for multiroom properties turning up in groups, viewings often still had up to 100 people passing through.
Morgan had three properties advertised over the weekend of January 21 and 22, and said he had ‘‘lists’’ of people wanting to look through.
Picking a tenant from a large group could be tricky, and Morgan said he looked for tenants who were well-presented and wellspoken, and who arrived with landlord references.
‘‘The positive side of it, if there is a positive side, is that generally we get to do one viewing and the property will normally get rented,’’ he said.
‘‘The rest of it is pretty unpleasant because the fact of life is it’s quite stressful for the property managers, and of course it’s also dealing with people who desperately want somewhere to bloody live – and you know you can’t give it to them, because you’ve only got so much to go around.’’
Despite news reports of landlords hiking prices in the wake of student loan allowances getting a $50 bump, Morgan said he had not experienced this.
However, he expected increases to hit next year, with many of his landlords now convinced rental increases were justified.