The head of Cromwell police, Sergeant Mike Williams, said a 27-year-old Cromwell man had been charged with one representative charge of burglary which encompassed alleged offending at 16 different Cromwell homes.
He will appear in the Alexandra District Court on Wednesday.
Sgt Williams said the offending started in July, "with a spike in numbers during the past month".
There were eight separate incidents of underwear having been stolen from clotheslines, he said.
A Cromwell woman contacted the police after disturbing a man on her property on Thursday night and the description she gave matched a person police suspected of the crime.
"He was interviewed today [Friday] and then we laid the charges," Sgt Williams said.
No underwear had been recovered by police. It had been destroyed, he said.
