I hope you all had a nice long Easter weekend. It’s been a productive but hectic first quarter so it was important to take time out over Easter, slow down and reset if you could. I know the end of the financial year will have been very busy for some of you and will have had many of you thinking about your year ahead.

So, what’s been happening in the property industry over the last couple of months? Some highlights have been:

• Apartment rentals in Auckland city centre have been filling up and we have noticed an increase in demand meeting pre-pandemic levels, possibly due to immigration levels, as well as office workers and students returning to city living.
• We are encouraging Body Corporate Owners who rent their apartments to have their units managed by professionals. We have noted that often self-managed units don’t have the same tenant selection and screening processes in place as professional property managers do. This can lead to some serious unwanted situations and can be very difficult for other owners/tenants living in a building. A timely reminder that a copy of Body Corporate rules need to be sent to a property manager and/or tenant if a Body Corporate property is tenanted.
• We are in a slow property market and since January the median price has fallen across most Auckland suburbs. If you are planning on selling a house, but can afford to rent it out instead, then the current rental market is a good way to cover the mortgage via rental income.
• New legislation to enable more build-to-rent developments has passed its third reading.
• We have noted that prospective tenants have the choice of many properties in the market to view and compare so rental owners need to spend time to ensure they present their properties to show their best features.
• We have added new Commercial, Body Corporate, Residential, and Waiheke holiday home managements to our portfolio during the past couple of months, and have welcomed additional experienced professionals to our team.

As always, our portfolios have capacity for new managements so if you have a property that would benefit from professional management, or you know someone with property, we would love to hear from you. With every new management, we donate to Sustainable Coastlines – a charity with a goal to reduce plastic pollution of our coastlines. Speaking of which, our team will be out later this month with our gloves and bags collecting rubbish at Point Chev beach – putting our talk into action, something we do every day in the world of property management.

As a closing thought, let’s all do something special on April 25^th, ANZAC Day, to remember those who gave so much so that we can enjoy living peacefully in our great country.