Tauranga housing squeeze tightens

TAURANGA: A squeeze on Tauranga’s housing supply is making people desperate to find a home go to a rental agent in tears and a property developer predicts the area will run out of land to build houses on in the next two years.

Property prices and rent continue to skyrocket in the fastgrowing city. CoreLogic data shows house prices rose 14.8% last year to hit an average value of $876,000, while TradeMe data revealed the median rent in the Bay of Plenty hit a record of $535 in December 2020.

Tauranga Rentals owner Dan Lusby noticed the effect of the red hot property market.

‘‘We have some tenants come in and they’ve got a really sad story about trying to find a home to live in,’’ he said.

‘‘They tell us their story and they start crying, and you hear their story and you feel like crying.

‘‘It can be desperate if you’re a tenant. They’re struggling to find properties, [as] there’s not a lot available.’’

He said TradeMe data showed there were about 170 properties available over the past month.

‘‘For a city that’s got 147,000 people, that’s not a lot of rentals available.’’

He said there were people from a range of demographics looking for a rental, from families to older people.

Those desperate to find a place to live were often locals from the Bay of Plenty, who were looking for a new house as the owners of their previous home wanted to move back into the property.

‘‘[The tenants have] done nothing wrong, it’s just circumstances and they can’t find anywhere [after] they’ve been looking for a while. Sometimes they’re in the last week, in the last few days [of their tenancy] and they still have nowhere to go.’’

The latest New Zealand Institute of Economic Research report on Tauranga’s housing situation says Tauranga will be short of nearly 1000 houses by 2022 — this gap was projected to grow to 5000 by 2025.

Property developer Classic Builders had been building about 1000 homes in Tauranga each year but codirector Peter Cooney said a land shortage would put a big spanner in the works. Tauranga was due to run out of land in the next two years, he said, and council infrastructure investment was inadequate too. — RNZ