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Much more went into landlords’ pockets than not.
Much more went into landlords’ pockets than not.

SocietyApril 4, 2024

Landlords ‘out of pocket $1.3m in unpaid rent’ – but they’re still pocketing $2bn

Staff writer
Much more went into landlords’ pockets than not.
Much more went into landlords’ pockets than not.

An article recently appeared online with the headline ‘Landlords $1.3 million out of pocket in unpaid rent for first two months of 2024′. Since rent goes from tenants’ pockets into landlords’ pockets, The Spinoff decided to sniff around the numbers. 

Hundreds of thousands of people up and down the motu pay money, every week, without fail, for the privilege of having a roof over their heads and somewhere to put all their stuff. Their payments are bound to timeframes, so after that week has passed, the money’s gone and it would seem so is their right to shelter. Then they must pay again.

On Monday, an article about rent arrears appeared on the Herald and RNZ websites with the headline Landlords $1.3 million out of pocket in unpaid rent for first two months of 2024. The figure in the story is a tally of rent arrears orders in Tenancy Tribunal decisions released in the first two months of this year, for tenancies that ended or were renegotiated over that time.

But how does that compare to how much rent did end up in landlords’ pockets? In the first two months of the year, residential tenants paid more than $2,131,703,865 in rent across the country. For those of us not used to seeing that many numbers in a row unless it’s a phone number, that’s two billion one hundred and thirty-one million seven hundred and three thousand eight hundred and sixty-five dollars. For anyone still struggling to understand just how ludicrously large that number is, think of it as being just a little more than Tonga and Sāmoa’s combined annual GDP (Tonga’s GDP is NZ$787,820,000, Sāmoa’s GDP is NZ$1,398,500,000). Now consider that in the two months that landlords were given all this money, they didn’t actually do anything productive. They just so happened to own property that other people needed to live in.

I don’t want to rub salt in the wounds of tenants’ bank accounts, but $2,131,703,865 isn’t even the complete amount that has left their pockets to enter the pockets of landlords in January and February.

We’ve come to this number with back-of-the-envelope calculations using data provided by Tenancy Services. As of January 1, it held 411,129 active residential bonds. When lodging the bonds, landlords fill in a form that provides various details of the rental arrangement including weekly rent, and using this information, Tenancy Services told us the median weekly rent across the country was $610. We multiplied this by 411,129 to get the weekly residential rent being paid – $250,788,690 – and then multiplied that by 8.5, the number of weeks in January and February. Badda-bing badda-boom: $2,131,703,865 just like that.

The vast majority of tenants pay rent in line with their tenancy agreements.

But this incredible mathematics in no way captures all the residential rent changing pockets. The complete number of tenants or the total amount of rent being paid is not held by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, nor does it appear to be held anywhere else. 

Our calculation falls short. Why? Ota Savaiinaea, the operations manager at Tenancy Bond Services, says, “Tenancy bond data is only a subset of the residential renting landscape.” There are many instances where a rental bond is not lodged – it’s not a requirement to ask for a bond and some landlords choose not to. People living in short-term accommodation like lodges, boarding houses, motels and hostels may have paid bonds equivalent to only a week’s rent, which can be held by the landlord. Situations like emergency or transitional housing, flatmates, boarders, and family renting from family are outside the scope of The Residential Tenancies Act 1986, and so Tenancy Services does not hold bonds for them. 

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    But property is a business just like any other, and business owners expect to be paid for the services or goods they provide. Take retail, for example. Retail sales in the 2023 calendar year totalled $100bn (seasonally adjusted). But there was also shoplifting – people taking the product without paying. In fact, retail crime increased last year, costing a total of $2.6bn, or 2.6% of sales. That feels like a decent amount, and probably worth mentioning in the news.

    So how much are landlords out? Well, as reported by the Herald and RNZ, landlords were “out of pocket” a whole $1.3m in the first two months of 2024 alone. That looks like a big number but is actually just 0.061% of rental sales, as it were. And while the story covered a range of issues, including those faced by tenants, that headline is hard to scroll past. 

    Still, Peter Lewis of the New Zealand Property Investors Federation said, “Getting money out of tenants is virtually impossible.” Aside from sounding like a pretty dubious claim, landlords still try their best. In one case before the Tenancy Tribunal, the tenant was behind on rent because they had died in the house and no one noticed until the landlord went looking for the money.

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    — Staff writer
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    A painting by Christopher Dews showing his idea of what Auckland will look like in the future. The scene shows Queen Street, with Town Hall and the Sky Tower in the background, with the Waihorotiu awa brought back above ground to cover what in our time is just a roadway.
    Painting: Christopher Dews.

    SocietyApril 4, 2024

    Auckland 2074: a daydream of a future city

    Staff Writer
    A painting by Christopher Dews showing his idea of what Auckland will look like in the future. The scene shows Queen Street, with Town Hall and the Sky Tower in the background, with the Waihorotiu awa brought back above ground to cover what in our time is just a roadway.
    Painting: Christopher Dews.

    Twenty-three year old Tommy de Silva dreams up a hopeful, sustainable future for Tāmaki Makaurau-Auckland, 50 years into the future.

    The year is 2074, and I am 74 years old. I must be getting sentimental in my old age since last night I dreamt of my grandfather explaining how much Tāmaki Makaurau-Auckland changed over his lifetime. As I wake up from my time machine, my dream inspires me to teach my mokos how much my hometown and tūrangawaewae has changed during my life. I tell my AI assistant to check which grandkid wants to be lectured today, and my granddaughter Moeroa responds. Our first stop will be Te Manukanuka o Hoturoa (Te Manuka for short), known in my youth incorrectly as the Manukau Harbour, our once polluted but now replenished ancestral moana and source of mauri for our Waiohua iwi.

    To get there, we’ll use Dominion Road’s light rail, part of what is now a fully-fledged light rail network spanning Māngere to Silverdale. It has been half a century since the now-dead Labour and National parties squabbled over whether Auckland should reinstate trams, the city’s public transport backbone in my grandparents’ youth. We begin our journey by bike, using the citywide safe, separated cycleway network built to combat Tāmaki’s once-treacherous traffic. As we ride, I explain to my moko how difficult it was in my youth to leisurely chat while cycling two abreast due to the lousy bike infrastructure. Nearing Dominion Road, I point out the vast multi-storey mixed-use development where New Zealand’s preeminent stadium, the long-gone Eden Park, used to sit.

    Auckland Transport's proposed rapid public transport
    A future rapid public transport network for Tāmaki Makaurau, as proposed by Auckland Transport in 2023. Light rail is shown in green. (Map: AT)

    From Dominion Road, we take the tram which, like all public transport, is free for under-25s like Moeroa and over-65s like me. At Māngere Bridge, we disembark to walk along Te Manuka’s shoreline. When I was Moeroa’s age, I tell her, I didn’t swim in our ancestral moana because it was so polluted. But the harbour’s mauri now resembles what my own nana knew as a tamariki, before the airport and the sewage plant (plopped on top of some of Tāmaki’s best shellfish beds) destroyed the ecosystem. Today, the water is always clean enough for swimming (with no heavy rainfall-induced sewage overflows because of improved pipes), and abundant kaimoana can once again be found in Te Manuka.

    Replenishing the harbour’s mauri helped renew commercial interest in the Manukanuka shoreline, particularly on the Onehunga side. Now a waterfront hospitality and retail precinct there rivals those along Te Waitematā in the central city. Moeroa and I stop there for kai, crossing Ngā Hau Māngere along the way, before boarding a city-bound tram. Onboard, I tell my moko how turning up at a public transit stop expecting a frequent, reliable service was a privilege that just didn’t exist in my youth.

    A tram running down Ian McKinnon Drive.
    Light rail shown here at the start of Dominion Road. (Image: NZTA/Auckland Light Rail)

    We get off the tram at Maungawhau station to summit its namesake mountain, one of the city’s OG green “skyscrapers” that inspired a building wave of nature-infused highrises. But climbing 196m is challenging for a 74-year-old like me, so Moeroa has a bright idea. “Can we scooter up?” she asks. Maungawhau station, like all Auckland public transit hubs, has a dedicated fleet of rental bikes/scooters to solve the wretched last-mile problem that historically limited buses, trams, trains and ferries reach. At Maungawhau’s tihi, Moeroa identifies the river-like channels of busways, cycleways, tramlines and parks that outline the CBD in a wonky upside-down triangle. I explain that those channels were the CBD’s inner-city motorways that were removed or undergrounded to promote bike/scooter and public transport use. While these former highways may resemble riverbeds, from atop Maungawhau, Moeroa points out the CBD’s actual awa, Te Waihorotiu – our next stop.

    While scootering towards Karanga-a-Hape – bastardised to just “K’ Road” in my youth before te reo Māori was made compulsory in schools – Moeroa asks if the city was always as peaceful as it is now. My answer encompasses the effects of congestion charging and the national ban on fossil fuel cars a few decades ago. Having parked our scooters at Karanga-a-Hape station – to the sound of birdsong and not cars like in my youth – we walk through St Kevins Arcade, via Mercury Lane’s pedestrian plaza, and into Myers Park. It’s a place which has changed dramatically since I went to kindergarten here 70 years ago.

    A painting by Chris Dews showing the bottom/northern end of Myers Park taken over by the Waihorotiu awa.
    The northern end of Myers Park shown here in its future state with the resurfaced Te Waihorotiu awa flowing through the park towards Aotea Square and Queen Street. (Painting: Christopher Dews)

    Today, the ancient awa Te Waihorotiu, forced underground two centuries ago, flows again through Myers Park, Aotea Square and Queen Street into Te Waitematā. Sitting on its bank, Moeroa and I discuss how Te Waihorotiu resurfaced. She vaguely remembers learning in school about a deadly 2020s deluge, which, after many years of fruitless political debate, inspired the city to daylight undergrounded awa. Not only do the resurfaced rivers ensure Auckland is better prepared for extreme rain, but they imbue it with te taiao’s beauty.

    Queen Street, shown here right in front of Auckland Town Hall, overrun by the channel of the Waihorotiu awa which takes up where the road used to be.
    Te Waihorotiu running down Queen Street in front of the Auckland Town Hall. (Painting: Christopher Dews)

    When my achy joints finally permit me to rise from the bank, Moeroa leads us along the river’s calming course towards Te Waitematā, whose mauri, much like Te Manukanuka o Hoturoa’s, has now been restored. Nearing the harbour, we avoid the cargo-bike deliveries that have become synonymous with supplying CBD stores since the area was made car-free. At the foreshore, we admire the plentiful mussel pots that filter runoff before entering the harbour.

    A redeveloped Waitematā waterfront precinct, which features more greenery, zero-cars and a harbour so clean that people can swim in it right here at the bottom of the city. (Painting: Christopher Dews)
    A redeveloped Waitematā waterfront precinct, which features more greenery, zero-cars and a harbour so clean that people can swim in it right here at the bottom of the CBD. (Painting: Christopher Dews)

    I look eastward along the waterfront, where the old port has been replaced by public space and Eden Park’s successor stadium – a better-designed building than the silly “sunken stadium” that ignored sea level rise. Moeroa notices the imposing Auckland Harbour Bridge to our west. “Can we bike up the old bridge?” she asks. “The view from up there is so much better than on the new one!”. Grabbing rental bikes at Waitematā station (once called Britomart), we pedal towards and then up the old harbour bridge. At its apex, I explain to Moeroa how fortunate she is to cross Te Waitematā other than on a bus, car or ferry. When I was her age, Aucklanders only cycled or walked this bridge during marathons or protests. Pedestrian and cycle access to the bridge had been repeatedly promised, and postponed, since the era when my nana, then a schoolgirl, walked the bridge during its 1959 christening.

    Atop the old bridge, I gaze westward, seeing dense housing corridors along train and tram lines, while Moeroa tugs at my shirt. “Um, aren’t we supposed to meet grandma in Whangaparāoa soon?” she says. We pedal northward to the nearest station on the northern light rail line, which used to be a busway that went only as far as Albany. Unlike when I was Moeroa’s age, we’re not worried about leaving our own bikes parked on Dominion Road overnight, thanks to the safe and secure citywide bicycle storage.

    An artists depiction of what a cycling and walking connection across the Auckland Harbour Bridge might look like.
    An artistic depiction of what a cycling and walking connection across the Auckland Harbour Bridge might look like. (Image: Bike Auckland)

    Onboard the tram, we’re heading for our Whangaparāoa transfer bus at the PenLink. By the point we pass the old Takapuna Golf Course, which was developed to maximise Smales Farm station’s catchment, I’m starting to doze off. In my dream, this time, I am greeted by my younger self. While he is happy that today I can take our mokos on a Tāmaki tiki tour via sustainable transport, he has one pressing and pertinent question. “In the face of the climate crisis, economic hardship and the pollution of our ancestral moana and whenua, why did it take our city so goddamn long to take sustainability seriously?”

    This is Public Interest Journalism funded by NZ On Air.

    Society