It is expected to run out of available land for housing in the next two years
Buyers are desperate to find a home in Tauranga, but its tight housing supply makes house hunting challenging. What’s worse, a property developer predicts that the city will run out of available land for homes in the next two years.
CoreLogic’s latest data revealed that housing values exceeded $800,000 for the first time last month, increasing from $788,967 in December 2020 to $806,151 in January 2021 – an average increase in value of $554.32 a day. Meanwhile, Trade Me revealed that the national median weekly rent increased to $520 in December 2020.
Tauranga Rentals owner Dan Lusby said he saw many renters struggling to find a home amid the city’s 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. They tell us their story, and they start crying, and you hear their story, and you feel like crying,” Lusby said, as reported by RNZ.
“It can be desperate if you’re a tenant. They’re struggling to find properties, [as] there’s not a lot available.”
He said those desperate to find a new place were often from Bay of Plenty as the owners of their last 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,” Lusby continued.
Peter Cooney, the co-director of property developer Classic Builders, expects Tauranga to run out of land in the next two years unless the separate issues blocking the development of two major greenfield projects – Te Tumu and Tauriko West – are resolved.
He added that the Resource Management Act (RMA) process was slow, making it impossible to catch up with demand.
“We were short of stock in that [2008] recession. Although the recession slowed everything down, when [the demand] came back, our planning wasn’t far enough ahead at that stage. We’re only just doing that over the last couple of years,” Cooney said, as reported by RNZ.
