SkylarkR

Hi Everyone

For those of you who have rented in NZ would you say it is possible to negotiate on the listed rental prices in NZ or is this not the done thing..? I've been having success in doing this with short term/temporary accom options but not sure how this will go down with estate agents once I am talking about longer term rentals?

TIA

jmh

Depends on the rental market. If you know the landlord has had trouble letting it out, it's worth a try. You can also haggle on other things like lower rent if you agree to do certain tasks around the property that would not normally be done by the tenant - e.g. mow the landlord's berm (you would probably be expected to do your own). I hear in Auckland that there are queues round the block for good rentals right now, so it's unlikely to work here.

Mark Smith

Mixed bag here in Chch. Cash and rent-free offers fail to lure tenants as Christchurch housing shortage u-turns | Stuff.co.nz

Pulaski

You're more likely to succeed with a private landlord than a corporate landlord. A private landlord might look favourably on an offer to rent for a longer period as quid pro quo for lower rent.

Pom_Chch

Depends where you are based and what the demand is for rentals. About 4 years ago in Chch there would have been no chance due to demand from the earthquake. If anything people were throwing themselves at rentals offering way more than the stated price and offering to sign 5 year contracts. That's all blown over now as houses are getting finished, although I think there's still a bit of demand.

BEVS

They're off to Auckland.

Yes. I was actually listening to something about this on the radio yesterday.

What area of Auckland are you thinking of? Might help those in Auckland to help with this.

Good luck with the rental hunt SkylarkR.

escapedtonz

In our experience, no chance.
We've asked every time and offered to do extra things to reduce the weekly cost but in all honesty the demand for the rentals was high in every case so the agent will just move on to the next family.
A friend of ours recently agreed $30 a week off a newly advertised rental but only because it was priced very high anyway and hadn't been rented as soon as advertised but they are still paying $530 a week for a 3 bed bungalow in suburbia.

We've just had the agent in this arvo doing viewings on the house we are in as we served notice on Monday for 3 weeks time. 3 families turned up all one after another. Told the second family it had already gone (as she'd agreed to rent to family no 1 who got here first) and then she left. Family 3 just knocked on the door and had come to view. I had to tell em the viewing was over and it had been rented.
Boo!

Clappy

Despite the amount of space, the population of this country is small so it is a very small market in many respects which makes negotiations very different from anything you might have encountered before.

Whether or not it is possible to negotiate a lower price will depend on the level of demand in the area at the time. In Auckland I would be surprised if there was anything above zero chance at the moment.

My experiences of finding a rental were from six or seven years ago so not completely up to date although from what I read in the press things are much the same now. Anyway, at one place that we were interested in there was another party interested also so the Agent then negotiated with us over how much above the asking price we were prepared to pay.

SkylarkR

I thought that might be the case. We are heading north of Auckland City - orewa/silverdale/redbeach. I've been keeping an eye on a few places just to get a sense for how quickly things are moving (we don't fly out until 23/3) but I have noticed a few places that have been listed for about 4 weeks now. Aside from wondering what was wrong with them (!) I started wondering if this opens up discussions on price and it sounds like it would be worth a try at least.

Still a bit early for me to do anything but just trying to get a read for the market.

Thanks all for your insight - that's been really helpful.

SkylarkR

Yeah, I can quite imagine there are some 'bidding wars' for the good places. Not really looking forward to this part of our move!

wez130

I went into a real estate agents today to see what the craic is with buying property, and the lack of price on properties for sale (by negotiation) as i find it really frustrating when i look through the property mags and see a property and i haven't a clue how much they are looking for, and i don't want to embarrass myself when it turns out it's a couple of hundred $k over budget. Anyway, apparently, the agent i spoke to today said that sales have slowed up here in Rodney, there's a hell of a lot of development going on here in Millwater / Silverdale, but it's all aimed at millionaires as it's all $1m properties, and nothing being build for first time buyers. This is probably diluting the sales too as there's more choice which is probably forcing vendors to lower their prices - which is a good thing for us. Though, i still can't see us getting anything decent this side of $500k when we move here in November.

There is a point to what i said above though. Many, many people have been priced out of the buying market for the above reasons as vendors have been getting greedy, which is forcing more people into renting, again, landlords have seen the increase in demand and now they are getting greedy now. The mean rental price across the whole of NZ now is $450 / week, an increase of 7% on last year, and whilst the demand is there, it ain't gonna get any easier.

The government really need to get off their back sides and do something about it, build more social housing, force building companies into building more affordable housing for first time buyers, i dunno? If they don't though, there's going to be even more families priced out of their own country and sleeping in their cars / rough, all because of foreign investors.

Bo-Jangles

Most of Auckland has been on holiday since about 16th December and hardly anyone moves at this time of year. It's still very quiet just now and Auckland is still only running at half-strength and won't be fully back into it for another week or so when schools start to open up again, the week after next.

Auckland is a very competitive market for rentals and I have never heard of anyone that's done a deal to negotiate the rent downwards; as far as I can tell 'the only way is up' and quite often hear people offering more than the advertised rent to improve their chances and secure better places.

SkylarkR

Ah, so maybe things are around longer because of the holidays - thanks, that makes sense.

The Rodney developments are ok, but really pricey I agree. We looked around there in November and some lovely houses, but we want to escape the new build, on top of each other housing developments that we have here which is what that is for your $1m upwards!

Ive read a series of articles in the herald lately about proposed changes to land development regs that would ease things up more but whether they go through or not is anyone's guess...

Thanks all for this info. It's really helpful and just more of an idea as to how this all works helps to destress me a bit!

I'm not good with unknowns and this move is full of them! Lol

BEVS

Most of New Zealand for that matter and they are all down here in our village.

Charismatic

Banks have eased up on marginal Auckland deals as well as rates increasing slightly which has slowed activity down but there isn't a flood of new dwellings comming any time soon so sales are dropping back rather than people cashing out.

It's always been interesting to me that people would choose to live in Auckland without demanding a more substantial pay check.