January 27, 2013
Auckland rent data: too hard basket
Juha Saarinen, on Twitter, asks for data addresses the Auckland rent shock headlines.
Detailed data on new rentals are available from the ‘market rent’ pages at MoBIE, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to download the whole thing, just individual neighbourhoods. And it’s a long weekend.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Alas it is true, you have to undertake an extensive point-and-click exercise to get the numbers and historical data isn’t available. Goodness knows why this is the case, as the data is really only useful once seen in a historical context. And certainly, historical data is the only way to determine whether the trend is slow and steady or a “shock”.
11 years ago
Not true at all. For people looking to rent (either as landlord or tenant), this is a very useful resource.
11 years ago
Exactly: it’s quite useful for what it’s designed for (though you could imagine improvements, like an interactive map — I must suggest this to Paul Murrell in case he has a student looking for examples).
It’s useless for a lot of other purposes, and it’s a pity MoBIE don’t make more information available in bulk. They do have to be a bit careful about disaggregation — rental prices are not public information — but it would still not be too hard.
11 years ago
It’s a fair point, but I’d still argue that knowing the relative changes in the rent over time is important to a new renter, particularly in places such as Christchurch where the changes in rent are (how can I put this kindly?) somewhat chaotic. In this respect, the media does not help since they use phrases such as “sharp” or “shock” rises to describe changes, using data that the rest of us doesn’t have access to. I’d also like to know the effect that true rents differ from these statistics, given that the statistics are based on bond returns. Again, Christchurch peculiarities apply here…
11 years ago