Source: Radio New Zealand
50 percent of respondents worry they cannot pay for housing in the future. RNZ / Quin Tauetau
The cost of housing is making it difficult for people to pay their bills, with one-in-four delaying medical care and/or skipping meals in the past year.
“The sacrifices revealed in this data are not a cost-of-living story,” The Urban Advisory (TUA) co-founder and director Dr Natalie Allen said.
“They are an ongoing story about housing system failure.
“We are now two years into this survey and the patterns are not changing. They are hardening.”
The second annual Housing Survey by TUA drew on the experiences of 5232 New Zealanders surveyed between August 2024-January 2026.
Dr Allen said the data could help inform commercial decision-making, as the country looked to invest more into infrastructure.
The issues
She said making ends meet was something faced by ordinary households – renters, moderate-income families and first-home aspirants – and wasn’t limited to people living in extreme poverty.
However, there was a gap in sentiment between those who owned and those that rented.
While 90 percent of homeowners felt stable and secure in their housing, only 57 percent of renters said the same.
Renters also reported colder and damper homes, lower energy efficiency and less control over their living conditions.
What the survey found
- 50 percent of respondents worry they cannot pay for housing in the future.
- 45 percent are dissatisfied with the housing options available to them.
- 28 percent delayed medical appointments because of housing costs.
- 91 percent say housing costs too much relative to income.
- 25 percent skipped meals
- 76 percent rank safety from natural hazards as the most important property feature, above price and outdoor space.
What people want
The survey indicated New Zealanders weren’t dissatisfied with renting as a way of living, but were dissatisfied with the quality and insecurity of the rental homes available to them.
Allen said renting was a viable tenure option, but only if the product improved.
“Renters are paying more for less,” she said. “That is a structural failure with nationwide implications, not a set of unfortunate individual circumstances.”
Housing for an ageing population
Nearly half (49 percent) of people planning to retire in the next 10 years expected to downsize.
Most plan to stay in the region where they currently live, yet the market offered very few well-located, accessible, compact homes at the quality and price required.
Allen said it was not a niche problem, describing it as one of the strongest signals of future housing demand.
The commercial opportunity
The market wasn’t responding at scale to the demand for secure, long-term rental options by 52 percent of respondents.
TUA co-founder and director Greer O’Donnell said internationally proven models such as build-to-rent, shared equity, co-operative housing, community land trusts, progressive ownership and new-generation retirement living remained undersupplied in New Zealand.
“There is a large and growing segment of demand that the current market is not serving,” O’Donnell said.
“Diversifying New Zealand’s housing stock is now both a social necessity and a commercial imperative.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand