Work from home lifts rents in outer suburbs

An Auckland rental gradient analysis by Auckland University Business School academics William Cheung and Edward Yiu, with Daniel Wong of the Tamaki Regeneration Company shows following the covid-19 pandemic and the resulting shift towards working from home, rents in Auckland’s lower-density, city-fringe suburbs increased more than those in the city centre.

The  study published in the International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis used rental listings data in 242 Auckland suburbs from January 2013 to December 2021, as well as micro-level household data from Statistics New Zealand to understand this trend.

The academics applied a rental gradient analysis to compare rental prices pre-and post-Covid-19 and found the difference in rental prices between the city centre and suburbs further out becomes much less pronounced after 2021.

“Because many businesses introduced more flexible working arrangements following the onset of Covid-19, suburbs further away from the office likely became more attractive places to live,” Cheung says. In turn, this pushed rent prices up.