Waikato rents up 7% annually – but how have Hamilton’s 30 suburbs fared?

In April Trademe reported that national and Waikato weekly rents were both up 7% annually, closely in line with inflation which is running at 6.9%.

Unfortunately, Trademe didn’t give data on Hamilton’s suburbs, so we decided to crunch the numbers ourselves!

Using data from the Bond Centre we backed out the median weekly rent for rental properties in 30 Hamilton’s suburbs – from Bader to Whitiora.

The most recent rent data available is for March, so pretty recent.

We compared March 2021 rents with March 2022 rents for 3 bedroom houses (we chose 3 bedroom houses as they represent the most common type of rental in Hamilton).

The results make interesting reading. Here’s a summary:

• On average rents increased 5.7% for 3-bed houses in Hamilton
• Tenants in Maeroa and Forest Lake fared best. On average, they saw no increase in rent over the last 12 months.
• Renters in Fitzroy and Chedworth witnessed the biggest rent increases (15% and 14.8%, respectively). It is worth noting that there are less than 100 bonds recorded for those suburbs, so some care should be taken when drawing conclusions on those two suburbs.
• The most common suburbs for 3-bed rentals are Frankton and Hamilton East. There are close to 2,000 3-bed rentals in these two suburbs. They saw increases of 6% and 5% respectively – close to the average.

Wondering what happened in your suburb? You can find the full league table in the attachment below.

We’ve included some extra goodies for you – things like ‘3-bed Lower Quartile Yield’ which is the annual rental yield on the lower quartile sale price in that suburb. That’s the yield we use when benchmarking or analysing investment properties.

Oliver Pearson

Manager and Property Investor for 20+ years

Oliver Pearson

Manager and Property Investor for 20+ years

Oliver Pearson began investing in property aged 21 and has since bought, developed and sold real estate in the UK, USA, South East Asia and New Zealand. After a career in banking he is now on the management team at Waikato Real Estate and has contributed to property articles for NZ Herald, Stuff and Property Investor Magazine.

Based in Raglan, Oliver's passions extend beyond property to surfing, hydrofoiling, and providing a taxi service for his children.