Influential Aucklanders fight richlister landlords over Viaduct rents

Sunday, 10 May 2026

The influential body corporate tenants of Auckland’s Viaduct Basin have banded together to fight their richlister landlords over spiralling ground rents and apartment intensification, reports Jonathan Killick.

“We dont have oligarchs in New Zealand,” says Waitematā councillor Mike Lee. “We call them richlisters.”

“These guys have got so much land down there and they got it cheap - now they have an obligation to the community that’s taken residence there.”

Lee is talking about a growing battle between four of New Zealand’s wealthiest families and their ground lease tenants in the Viaduct Basin — one of the country’s most valuable waterfront precincts.

The “master planned” neighbourhood is home to politicians, media personalities and other influential Aucklanders who say they are facing “unsustainable” rent rises of up to 200%.

Under the leasehold model, residents own their apartments but not the land beneath them. Ground rents are reassessed every seven years based on a site’s “highest and best use” - meaning zoning changes can sharply increase costs.

The model has caused strife right across the supercity, particularly in suburbs such as One Tree Hill and Parnell, where some leasehold homes now sell for less than their mortgages.

Enter the government’s housing reform programmes which have seen zoning and “highest use” up for reset twice in the last five years.

Landowner Viaduct Harbour Holdings Limited (VHHL), a holding company for developer Tramco, submitted a request for heights of up to 50 metres as part of Plan Change 78.

Residents viewed the proposal as a way to inflate land values - and therefore future ground rents - even if existing buildings were never redeveloped.

“It's not like those buildings are going to be torn down and redeveloped, right?” says resident and former National Party president Michelle Boag.

“But if you're allowed to build higher, you can charge more ground rent.”

In mediation documents seen by the Sunday Star-Times, VHHL argued the height increases would simply give effect to the government’s push for greater urban intensification.

But residents say they are still reeling from the last rent review cycle seven years ago, when some increases ranged from 69% to 134%.

Some one-bedroom apartments in Boag’s block that sold for about $600,000 a decade ago are now changing hands for closer to $200,000 as buyers shy away from leasehold properties.

“All around town, leasehold environments are becoming unsustainable - it's a huge transfer of value from the owner to the landlord,” says Boag.

This time, body corporates representing about 673 apartments and 1500 residents have formed a collective front to negotiate with VHHL and oppose further intensification.

“They're all putting their hand in their pockets to fight the landlord, basically,” says Boag.

A spokesperson for VHHL says the company understands “living with the uncertainty of a ground rent review can be stressful”.

“We would rather concerns be aired and addressed than left unresolved. We prefer to work through any concerns directly and that door always remains open,” says VHHL chief executive Kym Bunting.

“While parties will always endeavour to reach agreement, we recognise that is not always possible. Where there is disagreement, the lease framework provides for an independent arbitration process,” she says.

‘Making a killing’

The origins of the Viaduct deal were themselves controversial.

After Auckland Council spent tens of millions developing the waterfront precinct for the 1995 America’s Cup, criticism mounted over the public cost of the project.

In 1996, developers Trevor Farmer, Alan Gibbs, Mark Wyborn and Ross Green of Tramco bought the basin for $75 million.

“That particular company was fortunate during a time of recession in Auckland to grab hold of what was a public legacy block of land,” says Lee.

“And they’ve made an absolute killing.”

Today the Viaduct is among Auckland’s most valuable waterfront real estate, with the purchase helping build what is now estimated to be a $2.4 billion property empire.

In a statement to the Star-Times VHHL’s Bunting points out the site was a working port at the time of purchase, not the world-class precinct it is today.

“What stands there now is the result of nearly 30 years of sustained investment, vision, partnership and development,” she says.

“And it’s become home to a thriving residential community all under a leasehold model that has underpinned it throughout.”

But Lee says the model has increasingly “pushed the envelope”.

“Every storey they add on, that's more money for them as it were,” he says.

“But there are other more important environmental and social considerations to take into account.”

Bunting says leasehold ownership is common in New Zealand and internationally.

“While leasehold ownership may not suit everyone, the opportunity to live in a premium waterfront and city centre precinct is unique, and VHHL is committed to ensuring Viaduct Harbour continues to be a place residents are proud to call home.”

‘Undermining’ the community

Among concerned residents of the Viaduct is former broadcaster and Q Theatre board chair Penelope Barr-Sellers, who says talk of redeveloping the basin is “just crazy”.

“You've got this whole corridor of marine foreshore that people can enjoy without massive towers creating shade and wind tunnels, and I think it's been brilliantly planned,” she says.

Residents also point to the impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle, when several buildings’ basement garages flooded and the Sofitel temporarily closed.

“I have got a background in meteorology,” says the former TV weather presenter. “And you continue to have these quite ferocious tropical storms coming particularly in to the north east.

“I don't know that the infrastructure could cope with having [higher] multi-level buildings here.”

But residents say their greatest concern is what rising ground rents could do to the area’s sense of community.

“I think you'll change the character of the place because I think there'll be people going, ‘we can't afford to live here’. Financially it'd be too tough.”

An independent panel considering Plan Change 78 found that argument persuasive.

There could be “consequential amenity effects if apartments were run-down or abandoned due to excessive ground rent increases,” the panel wrote in its decision.

But the fight is not over.

Fresh submissions from VHHL coincide with an investigation by RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop into increasing CBD intensification alongside Plan Change 120.

This time, VHHL has turned the residents’ environmental arguments back on them, arguing greater height and density could help fund responses to natural hazards.

For residents, it means another legal and political battle.

“Growth needs to happen in the right places, but the Viaduct is not one of them,” says public relations executive Deborah Pead.

“It is not underutilised land. It is one of Auckland’s most successful public precincts. Its shared waterfront, amenities and character are enjoyed by thousands of Aucklanders and visitors.”

“Revisiting that decision would primarily benefit the freehold landowner,” she says. “And if decisions of that nature can be reopened so readily, it raises broader questions about planning certainty.”

But Bishop tells the Star-Times he is targeting planning provisions “that are holding back Auckland’s CBD”.

“This could include height limits - with a view to making these more enabling for development,” he says.

Legislation enabled him to make changes to rules “negatively impacting economic growth or development capacity”, he says.

Boag says the Viaduct is already “appropriately intensified”.

“I don't believe Chris Bishop's ever walked through the Viaduct,” she says.

“I mean, he barely gets out of Wellington.”