Simplicity’s mega Queenstown development just got bigger

Wednesday, 10 June 2026

The scope of Simplicity Living’s planned build-to-rent development in Queenstown has expanded, and it will now add more than 1050 affordable rental homes to the town’s market when completed.

Simplicity, which has become the dominant developer in New Zealand’s build-to-rent sector, has bought an additional 3ha of land for the development on Ladies Mile, the company announced on Wednesday.

That will enable it to increase the size of the build to 1078 apartments from the 660 originally planned, making it more than three times the size of the company’s Reiputa Apartments in Auckland’s Mount Wellington.

Reiputa Apartments, which opened in May, has 297 apartments, and that makes it the country’s biggest build-to-rent development to date.

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Build-to-rent developments are large scale, multi-unit residential buildings which offer long-term rental agreements, are professionally managed, and do not offer apartments for sale to individual owners.

The Queenstown development will be built over 10ha near Remarkables Park, and when completed it will be 100,000m² of floor area, more than twice the size of Auckland’s St Lukes Shopping Centre.

Simplicity managing director Sam Stubbs said the development would help to meet the region’s desperate need for affordable accommodation for locals, and for tourism workers.

“It is critical for the region’s, and New Zealand’s, tourism growth, and will provide housing security and affordability for those who service Queenstown’s high number of visitors.”

Queenstown’s shortage of affordable housing was exacerbated by the prevalence of short-term rentals in the market, with 28% of properties in the town empty on census night 2023, he said.

“About 55% of the average income is spent on rent in Queenstown, which is about 15% more than the national average. That shows you just how crazy the market is here.

“In contrast, build-to-rent provides permanent tenure security, and as a build-to-rent operator, Simplicity Living sets rents to maintain high occupancy and low turnover.”

While the development would not fix the town’s rental market problems on its own, it would go a long way to helping out, he said.

Simplicity planned to carry out the development in stages over a four to five-year construction period, with the first 60 to 80 homes built to house workers on the project.

The construction phase is expected to generate more than $1 billion in economic activity nationwide over the next five years.

Employment will peak at 860 full time employees nationally in 2029, and once completed the development will create 40 to 50 permanent management and maintenance positions.

About 75% of economic activity and employment will be retained within the Queenstown-Lakes District.

Stubbs said the end value of the development would depend on what got consented, but under any reasonable circumstances and assuming 1078 homes were completed it would be $500m plus.

“But it’s a huge, long-term construction enterprise, and personally, what I love is how many people it will employ during construction and then when completed.”

The development has recently been accepted into the fast-track process, and Simplicity planned to lodge an application in the next eight weeks.

Stubbs said they hoped for a decision by the end of the year, and if all went according to plan they would be ready to start work on the development early next year.

Long-term plan for 10,000 affordable rentals

Back in 2022, Simplicity announced a goal to build 10,000 affordable, long-term rentals over the next 10 years.

It has completed four developments in Pt England, Onehunga, Mt Albert, and Mt Wellington in Auckland, which equate to a combined 507 homes.

Of those, more than 410 are rented, with the remaining homes in the newly opened Reiputa Apartments expected to be leased by the end of this year.

Construction is under way on three more Auckland developments, a 330-apartment complex in Remuera, a 322-apartment complex in Morningside and a 93-apartment building in Northcote.

And in March it announced it had purchased 1.4ha of land in Mount Albert for a 203-home development within the Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei-led Te Punga development.

Stubbs said the company now employed about 2000 people, directly and indirectly, and it was able to keep building through the down period of the construction cycle because of KiwiSaver.

Simplicity Living is owned by funds in the Simplicity KiwiSaver and Investment Fund Schemes, although the maximum asset allocation for it in the funds was about 10%, he said.

“So it’s only a small part of a very large pool of money, but it means we have the dollars to get these things built, and we can build them at our own pace.”

Simplicity appears to be one of the only developers actively building build-to-rent developments at this time.

According to the Property Council’s sector tracker, there were 1650 build-to-rent units under construction, and 4071 units in the pipeline in March. Most of those units were in Auckland.

But CBRE Asia Pacific director Tamba Carleton said the number of build-to-rent developments in Auckland’s pipeline had fallen by about 90% over the last couple of years.