The power shift in Wellington’s rental market

Saturday, 17 January 2026

In today’s rental market, who blinks first: Tenants or landlords?

Wellington’s rental market has undergone a change in the last two years. It used to be that there was a line of tenants out the door hoping to get into a home, incentives offered to landlords to get chosen and even camp beds offered in garages to live in.

All that’s gone. At least in Wellington.

2025 was the hardest year Comprende’s Grant Foggo had seen in his 11 years in the property management industry.

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“The teams have to do a lot more viewings, there is no urgency from tenants and there is an oversupply [of rentals],” Foggo said.

He said they had to have hard conversations with some landlords about rents too.

So what’s been happening in Wellington?

It’s a combination of factors following from a slow property market, public services cuts and the flow on effects, concerns over local government issues and the economy. For Foggo, he’s seen people leaving the capital.

“I’ve seen really good nice families actually leaving but they might not be selling the home they were in and we are picking those up as rentals.”

Comprende started as a purely property management, but has branched into real estate as people asked them about selling their Wellington homes. Some decided to keep them as rentals.

He’s also seen landlords leave the industry.

Snapshot of Wellington rents

Rents have been dropping for a while. Realestate.co.nz’s data puts Wellington region’s current average rent at $663 a week ‒ down 8.4%.

The country’s awash with rentals, with new ones coming on to the market up 19.8% in December 2025 to 5349, compared to 4464 in December 2024.

In Wellington, stock levels were also up, with a 91.5% year-on-year increase to 925 properties.

A search of properties for rent on Trade Me found 1539 available between $200 and $2500 a week.

Infometrics data shows an average weekly rent in Wellington region was $587 in 2025, higher than the New Zealand average of $573. The growth in average weekly rent in the Wellington region was 1.4% for the year to March 2025. Growth was lower than in New Zealand as a whole, which was 2.3%.

In the Wellington region that average weekly rent accounted for 20.3% of the average household income ($150,588) in 2025.

The region’s population is largely stagnant - at about 543,000 in 2025, unchanged from a year earlier.

Online platform myRent, which gives landlords and tenants a way to connect, keeps running averages of rentals.

In November last year they said the median weekly rent in Wellington central - the inner city - was $545 and places were taking 21 days to rent.

So when economist Stuart Donovan’s lease was up he felt it was worth asking for a small rent decrease. His rent was $1250 and he asked for a $50 drop. It was declined and he is in the process of moving. That’s when he saw the online ad for the home he had been in at a reduced rent.

The landlord now had an empty home, no rent coming in and costs associated with advertising and vetting new tenants.

Foggo said it was completely unusual to have a rental market where there was not nearly full tenancy.

There was no point to a house sitting empty, he said.

“We are the ambulance at the top of the hill, sometimes we have to have honest conversations with [the landlords].”

He was not convinced incentives - most often the first week’s rent free - worked. With pre-approval Comprende did sometimes offer an incentive, but the focus was on getting good tenants.

What’s changing?

But by late 2025 there was starting to be some upward movement in rents around the country, Trade Me Property reported. Wellington, however, was not seeing the effect, with no movement in a month.

Trade Me Property’s latest Rental Price Index put the median weekly rent in November at $620 per week, up from $610 in October but down 1.6% year-on-year.

Foggo said they were starting to see more feet on the ground in Wellington. Some of it was short term rentals where people were coming in to live during the week on short projects in the public sector.

And he’s optimistic. “This is a cyclical adjustment.”

There are other factors to be thrown into the mix too. LJ Hooker’s head of research Mathew Tiller said the changes over granny flats would have an impact on the rental market.

Renters would benefit from an increase in smaller, more affordable housing options.

“These dwellings add much-needed supply in established suburbs, ideal for singles, couples, and key workers,” Tiller said.

In areas with strong demand and good transport links, he expected this change to ease pressure at the affordable end of the rental market, particularly as overall rents remained flat and affordability challenges persisted.