Empty home owners not willing to become landlords

Last year’s trial centred on eight empty Hamilton houses of which five were returned to the rental market and produced a plan for a national scheme. The scheme was deemed by the Government as too complex to work with owners of empty houses and the numbers of vacant houses are small.

Wise Group’s investigation into the number of ghost homes, why they were empty and how long they had been vacant threw up some interesting owner/landlord views.

The 2018 Census showed there were nearly 95,000 empty houses across the country -  an average rate of 5.1% of total housing supply.

However the data is misleading. Of the 39,795 properties in Auckland that were unoccupied on census night, 22,407 were because the residents were away, and 17,358 were empty. The number of empty homes amounted to 3.2% of total dwellings, compared to 5.2% for the rest of the country.