Infometrics chief executive and principal economist Brad Olsen said the New Zealand housing market fundamentally suffers from a lack of supply – causing house prices and rents to rise over time.
“Although people often focus on short-term accommodation as a key reason for higher rents and housing costs in some areas, this analysis clearly finds other factors have a much greater influence,” he said.
“When we looked across the range of possible factors that could influence rental prices, short-term rental accommodation only had a limited influence on rents and no real influence on house prices; providing some important evidence to add to the debate about housing, rents and the Stra sector.”
Looking at the Queenstown-Lakes District as an example, he said the survey found that short-term accommodation contributes negligibly to monthly rental price increases.
The average amount was an additional 35 cents a month. In comparison, between January 2018 and September last year, population growth in the region influenced a $101 per week increase in weekly rent – while short-term accommodation only influenced an $11 a week increase.
Olsen said their model looked at house and rental prices over time relative to changes in other factors that influenced the local housing market.
He acknowledged that people were the big factor. Other factors highlighted were record migration, low borrowing costs and high construction costs.
“Population came out as the factor that had the greatest influence on rents – with mortgage rates also having a noticeable influence,” Olsen said.
“However, when we controlled for all these other variables, our econometric analysis showed that the Stra influence on rents was very limited.”
Airbnb spokeswoman Susan Wheeldown said the new analysis shows that tailored solutions were needed to help solve housing affordability challenges. She also acknowledged that Airbnb wanted to work with Governments and communities to implement consistent nationwide rules to regulate short-term rentals.
