KEY POINTS:
Prospective tenants are bribing property managers and landlords with flowers, gifts and free labour in Auckland's super-heated rental market.
January and February have always been a landlord's market as students and professionals return to Auckland from summer breaks, but there are signs the competition is fiercer than ever in sought-after areas.
Director of rental agency Hot Property, Phillipa Gordon, said this month has been far busier than last January. She received 10 applications each for two $650 four-bedroom properties in central Auckland last week.
Andrew King of Auckland Property Investors' Association agreed it was "relatively easy" to find tenants, and said he had no trouble filling a house in December, which is usually the slowest month.
Another indicator is Trade Me, which carries rental listings for agents as well as private landlords. A Grey Lynn three-bedroom townhouse listed on the site last Sunday had been viewed 721 times.
"It's hard," said student Sammy-Rose Scapens, who turned up 15 minutes early to an open home in Westmere yesterday. Scapens, 19, said she tried to make a good impression.
"You try to talk to the landlord before everyone else does, get really dressed up."
Gordon has seen all the ploys. Offers to pay extra rent (two this week alone), business card flaunting, even personal bribes. Two friends vying for the same property were particularly inventive: one wrote a poem extolling her virtues as a tenant and gave Gordon chocolates; the other brought her flowers.
King's had offers to paint his properties and one builder offered to build an extra room for free.
Martin Dunn of agency City Sales sees fewer desperate measures for city apartment rentals, but said the market was surprisingly buoyant considering the influx of new apartments last year.
He said while numbers of overseas students may be down, there was a new trend of 20-somethings wanting to save on commuting costs and live in the city. He said a good one-bedroom place would rent within a week.
Rising rents do not seem to be deterring tenants. A December Massey University rental survey shows the national median weekly house rent rose 3.8 per cent last year, from $260 to $270.
Auckland's median rose from $320 to $330.
And rents are tipped to keep climbing. Andrew King said higher demand, increased maintenance costs, rates and insurance rises were all having an effect. He said high house prices were helping to push demand up, as young families were forced to rent for longer.
Hot Property's Phillipa Gordon said to win the race for good rental properties tenants did need to stand out. "But really pushy and cocky people are a turn-off."
Harrowing search for a home
I almost had to leave the room when the guy in the designer shorts said his flatmate was a landscape artist and would sort out the back lawn for free if they got the house.
We were six weeks into a harrowing seven-week search for a new home, and my patience for crass self-promotion was at breaking point.
When our landlord served us three months' notice in early December, my heart sank. I'd been there before - last time we found a place within three weeks. But this time we were five people looking for a four-bedroom house. I knew December in Auckland would be dead, and January murderous. It was. The open homes were like extreme speed-dating for a life-partner: 30, 40 people poking about, smiling at each other through clenched teeth, scoping out the house and the competition, on charm offensive.
Worse even than a media scrum.
Then there was the obsessive-compulsive scanning of Trade Me and newspapers, co-ordinating flatmates for viewings, discovering where our common ground ran out (in Mt Albert).
The application process was more rigorous than most job interviews I've had (three character references, car registration, make and model - would my beat-up 1988 Toyota be our downfall?).
Finally, when I was seriously reviewing my couch-dossing options, we got a call. The place our most disparately inclined flatties both loved was ours.
Now there's just the move to organise.
