General information only, not financial, tax or legal advice. Market figures are averages across many listings and are not a forecast for any particular property. What a specific home earns depends on its location, layout, condition, how it is priced and how it is run. Please talk to your own accountant or adviser before making a decision.
Why the maths stopped working
Two things moved at once, and they moved in opposite directions.
Auckland's median weekly rent has fallen — $635 a week in the year to April 2026, down from $650 a year earlier, on MBIE's bond data. The number of new bonds lodged fell too, from 17,967 to 16,152, which is what a slower market looks like from a landlord's side: longer to fill a vacancy, less room to push rent.
Mortgage costs did not fall to match. Carded one-year fixed rates are sitting around 4.6% to 5.0%, with floating rates well above that. For a lot of Auckland owners the rent now covers most of the mortgage, but not the mortgage plus rates plus insurance plus maintenance. Commentary across the sector has been blunt that most residential rentals are currently cash-flow negative.
That is the position a lot of people are quietly in. Not in trouble, exactly. Just topping it up every month and wondering how long that goes on for.
The same property, month by month
Take a central Auckland two-bedroom townhouse. As a long-term tenancy at the city median of $635 a week, it grosses about $2,752 a month, every month, with no seasonality.
The bars below are what the average Auckland short-stay listing grossed each month over the same sort of period. The dashed line is the tenancy.
Show the numbers
| Month | Short-stay gross | Long-term equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Sep | $3,731 | $2,752 |
| Oct | $3,872 | $2,752 |
| Nov | $4,726 | $2,752 |
| Dec | $4,023 | $2,752 |
| Jan | $4,246 | $2,752 |
| Feb | $4,101 | $2,752 |
| Mar | $3,866 | $2,752 |
| Apr | $3,009 | $2,752 |
| May | $2,731 | $2,752 |
| Jun | $3,695 | $2,752 |
| Jul | $4,570 | $2,752 |
| Aug | $3,742 | $2,752 |
Eleven months out of twelve sit above the line. The twelfth, May, comes in at $2,731 — within $21 of the tenancy, which is to say level with it.
Two things to be careful about before you read too much into that gap.
Both numbers are gross. The tenancy figure is close to what you actually bank. The short-stay figure is not: cleaning, linen, consumables, power, internet, platform fees and management all come out of it, and they are not small. We have walked through exactly where that money goes, and it is the piece most owners underestimate.
These are averages. They describe a pool of listings, not your house. A property that is wrong for short-stay will land well under them.
Where a long-term tenancy still wins
It genuinely does, for some people. The income is certain and arrives whether or not anyone books. The operating costs are a fraction of a short-stay property's. Nobody has to clean anything between guests, there are no platform fees, and the property does not care what month it is. It asks far less of your time, and it does not have a quiet May.
If what you need is predictable money and no involvement, that is a long-term tenancy, and no chart changes it.
The part that is in your control
The figures above are averages, and averages hide the thing that matters most.
What we kept noticing before we started Heron Living — and it is why we started it — is how many Auckland listings were underperforming for reasons that had nothing to do with the property. Photos that undersold a good home. Pricing set once and never touched. Enquiries answered a day and a half late. Calendars left closed by accident.
The distance between a well-run listing and a neglected one is far wider than the distance between the average listing and a tenancy. That gap is not luck and it is not the season. It is work, and it is the work most owners do not have the hours for.
There is a second thing a tenancy does not give you. A long-term tenant lives in the property continuously, and you will see inside it at an inspection a few times a year. A short-stay property is cleaned and checked between every single guest. You keep the house the way you want it, and you find out about problems in days rather than at the end of a tenancy.
What we would need to know about your property
An honest answer for a specific house needs more than a median. Location and walkability, layout and bed configuration, parking, how it is furnished, your title and body corporate rules, your insurance and mortgage conditions, the Auckland Council rules that apply, and how much of the year you want it available.
That is what a free appraisal is for. We will run your address against market data, work out a realistic range rather than a best case, and tell you if we think a tenancy is the better answer. It happens.
In short
- Auckland's median rent has fallen to $635 a week while one-year fixed rates sit near 5%.
- The average Auckland short-stay listing grossed more than the median tenancy in eleven months out of twelve — but that is gross, and short-stay costs are far higher.
- May is the month the two models converge.
- Long-term still wins on certainty, cost and effort.
- The spread between a well-run listing and a neglected one is wider than the gap between the two models.