The woman, who the Otago Daily Times has agreed not to name, said she moved to the Wakatipu about eight years ago with her former husband, initially renting a three-bedroom house for $500 a week — by the time they moved out last year, the rent had doubled.
However, it did not meet Healthy Homes standards, she said.
‘‘Single-glazed windows that would freeze on the inside, no insulation, so in wintertime the cold would come up through the wooden floors, no extraction fans ... no heating system in any rooms — we just had a fire that, unfortunately, because the house was so old [the heat] would just escape through the walls.
‘‘One of the windows was drilled shut.’’
The woman said her private landlord was ‘‘initially’’ quite good to deal with, but later threatened to kick them out when they complained.
Adding insult to injury, their power bills, in winter, were sometimes up to $1000 a month.
Last July, the couple, who had by then welcomed a child, signed a 12-month lease with a Queenstown property management company for a three-bedroom house in Arrowtown, for $1250.
The kitchen was ‘‘falling apart’’ and had no extraction fan, the floorboards were cracked and ‘‘move continuously ... so you have to kind of whack them back into place’’, and all the drains were blocked when they moved in.
‘‘The smell of it was disgusting.’’
There was also exposed fibreglass insulation in the ceiling of the attached garage.
While the property management company allegedly told her that was ‘‘fine’’, a master builder had advised it was illegal.
After the woman and her husband separated a couple of months ago, she started looking for a new home to live in with their 2-year-old child.
‘‘All the apartments ... are $600 to $700 — thank God I can afford that ... but the minute I said I had a [child] they were like, ‘no, sorry’.’’
It means she has been forced to stay in the current rental, though is grateful her former husband is assisting with her rent and the $350-per-week childcare bill.
While they both had good jobs, the woman said it was ‘‘impossible’’ to financially get ahead in the resort.
She has six friends renting an Arrowtown property for $1800 a week, which also had no heating, while four of her other friends, all in their late 30s, are sharing a small three-bedroom home for $1150 a week in the village.
‘‘You will not rent a house in Arrowtown for less than $1100 a week — it’s crazy, and these are old, old homes.
‘‘It’s just out of control.’’
The woman is looking to rent a property in Cromwell once her lease runs out, but ultimately expects she will have to move to Dunedin or Christchurch if she wants to be able to purchase her own home.
‘‘Cromwell’s even expensive now — I went to see a three-bed house in Cromwell that was $1.3million.
‘‘It was built five years ago for $500,000.’’
In Arrowtown, she said, a property purchased six years ago for $780,000 was now valued at $1.9m.
‘‘Stupid Aucklanders come down and buy them — 70% of Arrowtown is empty the majority of the time.
‘‘It is sad.
‘‘I’ve spent most of my adult life here and I’m having to leave because I can’t afford it.’’
This week, realestate.co.nz released the findings of its rental survey, which showed the average rent in the Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago area was $905 a week for a standard two-bedroom home — almost $100 more than February last year.
Queenstown rents averaged $993 a week, $924 in Wanaka and $690 in Central Otago — in the latter’s case, that was a 10% increase on this time last year and more than triple the rate of inflation.
According to Infometrics, the average weekly household income in Central Otago last year was $2255, equating to $117,254 — the national mean annual household income was $135,224.
Meanwhile, in January, the median household income for Queenstown-Lakes was $114,357, according to Infometrics.
That same month, the median house price was $1.8m, giving the district a median multiple of 15.58 — a median multiple of 3.0 or less is a good marker of housing affordability.
The next least affordable place in the country was Auckland central (7.99) followed by Tauranga (7.6).
