By The Waikato Times
A recent article on the shortage of rentals in Taupo - driven by the so called "empty rate" of houses that are there but unavailable for normal owner occupancy or rentals as they are either a holiday home left vacant for the owners occasional use or they are part of the AirBnB short term visitor and tourist accommodation market.
Elsewhere in the Waikato we see similar outcomes on the Coromandel peninsula as well as in Raglan - all following in the footsteps of Queenstown where rentals are so scarce that hot-bedding and overcrowding amongst hospitality and other minimum wage employees is becoming commonplace. Build-to-rent and other ways to incentivise additional good quality rental stock to be created is not the norm for the New Zealand housing market -but now desperately needed as part of the new models to fix a broken housing system!
