Rents in Napier up 6.5 per cent in the last year

Nationally, rental prices were up a total of 6.1 per cent to $433 per week.

Just released March rental statistics from the Property Investors' Federation show that rents in Napier have continued to grow over the past year.

"There have been so many cost and regulatory increases over the last few years that it isn't a surprise that rental prices are increasing as they are," NZPIF executive officer Andrew King said. "Unfortunately the situation looks likely to continue."

In order to remove monthly variations, the New Zealand Property Investors' Federation has averaged three months of rental prices for the year ended March 2018, and compared that to the same period in 2017.

In Napier, the NZPIF show that rents rose about 6.5 per cent to an average of $380 a week. That equates to an increase of about $25 on the same period the previous year - and slightly higher than the national average increase.

Nationally, rental prices were up a total of 6.1 per cent to $433 per week.

Hutt Valley had the largest increase at 17.1 per cent to $413 a week. Porirua was next with an 11.6 per cent increase to $407 per week, although Porirua statistics can also be quite volatile. Wellington Central rents increased by 6.8 per cent showing that the region overall had the highest rental price increases.

Nelson saw the third highest rental price rises at 9.2 per cent to $382.

Auckland rental increases ranged from 4.2 per cent in Waitakere to 5.2 per cent on the North Shore.

Twelve of the 17 main areas had rental price increases below the national average, indicating that rental price increases in the regions are growing quite strongly.

In Christchurch, rental price falls over the last few years appear to have bottomed out. While the 3.8 per cent increase in Christchurch rental prices to $386 is lower than the national average, it is the first time that rental prices have shown an increase since 2014.