Prepared for What Comes Next
August has been a month of preparation. As we reach the end of winter and look towards spring, there is traditionally a sense of the property market beginning to change gear. This year feels less certain, but one thing remains constant: being well prepared creates choices.
Across Goodwins, much of our work during August has therefore been focused on preparing our clients and their properties for what comes next.
The latest rental data provides some useful context. Across Auckland, rents remain comparatively steady rather than accelerating. Trade Me Property recorded a median Auckland rent of $655 per week in July, down $5 from both June and the same month last year. Realestate.co.nz, which measures average advertised rather than median rents, recorded an Auckland asking rent of $689 per week. The methodologies are different, but the message is broadly consistent: rental pricing remains relatively stable.
Well-presented family homes continue to attract good interest, whilst properties that are incorrectly priced, poorly presented or competing within areas of greater supply can take longer to secure the right tenant. For landlords, that distinction matters.
This is not necessarily a market in which simply asking for more rent will produce a better financial result. The cost of even a short additional vacancy can quickly outweigh a marginal increase in weekly rent. Understanding current comparable evidence, presenting a property well and responding to changing tenant demand can be considerably more valuable than pursuing an aspirational rental figure.
Nationally, there are also early indications that rental supply may be tightening. Realestate.co.nz reported that available rental stock fell to its lowest level of 2026 during July, with thirteen of nineteen regions recording fewer available properties than a year earlier.
Auckland, of course, cannot be viewed as one uniform rental market. The dynamics affecting an apartment in the CBD can be very different from those affecting a family home in Mount Albert, a townhouse in Parnell or a long-term rental on Waiheke Island. Waiheke, in particular, continues to behave as its own micro market, where comparatively limited long term rental supply can create quite different conditions from those experienced across metropolitan Auckland.
Our role is not simply to tell an owner what the Auckland median rent happens to be. It is to understand the individual property, the competing stock around it, the quality and depth of tenant enquiry, the owner’s objectives, and the financial consequences of the different decisions available. There is rarely one answer that applies equally to every property.
That same principle of preparation extends to what is coming next for our own family and business.
On 4 September, I will travel to China as a member of an Auckland Business Chamber delegation, visiting Chengdu, Mianyang and Chongqing. For me, the value of this opportunity lies not simply in travelling to an important international market, but in building relationships, learning more about the people and businesses operating there and gaining a better understanding of the connections and opportunities that may increasingly exist between New Zealand and China.
At almost exactly the same time, Brendan and Aleina Goodwin will travel via Singapore to Zurich to represent UNIQ at Henley & Partners’ Safe Haven Forum on 8 September. This invitation only forum brings together internationally mobile families, single family offices, governments, and advisers to consider questions around investment, mobility, residency, and security across jurisdictions.
Those conversations are highly relevant to the continued development of UNIQ. Increasingly, internationally mobile families and investors do not view property, residency, investment, and lifestyle as completely separate decisions. They are considering where they live, where they invest, where their children are educated and how they create flexibility and security across different countries and generations.
Our ambition with UNIQ is to ensure that, when New Zealand forms part of those decisions, our clients have a trusted property adviser here who can support them from their earliest enquiry through acquisition, ongoing management and ultimately the future sale of their property.
Importantly, however, looking outward does not change what sits at the heart of Goodwins.
Property management remains at the core of our business, and the relationships we have built with owners, tenants and our wider community over the past 35 years remain fundamental to who we are.
As we move into spring, our focus remains simple: Prepare well. Stay close to the market. Stay close to our clients. And be ready when opportunity presents itself.
As always, we thank our clients for the trust that they continue to place in us.
We look forward to an exciting September, both here at home and a little further afield.
