Rents are increasing in Gore and making housing more unaffordable, a Gore District Council report has revealed.
At last week’s Gore District Council meeting a report was tabled which outlined issues around housing and urban development.
The council is obliged to look at its urban development plans every year under central government laws.
The report said both housing supply and demand have remained steady over the past year, and housing supply was keeping up with demand.
Rents in the district have continued to increase, They grew by about 5% in the 2023-24 financial year but are predicted to slow in the next financial year.
There was still a need for affordable homes, but the number of people on the housing register has decreased over the past year.
Recent resource consent data indicated a preference for greenfield development with rural living opportunities rather than residential infill. However, historically long-term population growth has primarily been residential infill development in urban areas.
The report said the increase in housing supply was consistent with building consent data from previous years that showed a higher-than-average number of building consents being issued for new dwellings in the two previous financial years.
Resource consent data for the 2023-24 year shows about 90 new rural lifestyle lots were created in June 2023 to May 2024.
There were 27 building consents for Gore in the year to June, which was described as quite low. In comparison, the Gore District had 21 consents granted per 10,000 people, while Queenstown Lakes District — the highest yielding district — had 190 consents granted per 10,000 people.
Gore had fewer building consents granted per 10,000 population in comparison to other districts in the region, including the Southland District Council, which granted 49 and the Invercargill City Council, which granted 27.
Looking long term, there will be a need for additional greenfield land, signalled in the Gore District plan review. While historically housing supply has generally been sufficient to meet demand, it is anticipated that this will not be the case in the future.
During this financial year, house prices in Gore have increased by 4.7%.
As a national average, the affordability of rents have remained relatively constant over the past 10 years whereas in the Gore District they are increasingly becoming less affordable. Although Gore remained a relatively affordable place to rent nationally it was less affordable than both Clutha and Southland. Housing affordability in the Southland region was increasing and Gore was the exception to this trend.
The urban area population has remained relatively stable overall but with localised movement away from Mataura, Gore North and Gore Main to Gore West and Gore East. The growth had primarily been in the rural area. Long term population growth was, however, shown to primarily occur within the urban area which had about 75% of the growth.
There were 70 new rural lifestyle lots created in the 2022-23 financial year from August to May, indicating an increased demand for greenfield development with rural living opportunities around Gore and the settlements. This was anticipated with the additional provision of appropriately zoned land through the Gore District Plan review.
