I was going to work in NZ on a working holiday. (You can see why I chose to do this here.)
I was still in Japan, my home country. I looked for a home online. Some people look for a board after they go to NZ. But, it costs a lot of money. Before deciding on your stay, you must stay at a hotel or something.
I can show you the best way to look for your home with cheap rent in New Zealand.
Rent is expensive in NZ.
The rent index shows how expensive rent is. That of Japan, and that of New Zealand are 13.4, and 25.4 respectively in 2024. A Japanese like me needs more than twice the amount of money for rent in NZ.
I was not sure how much money I could earn in NZ. My English was not good. So, I was expecting to work at a restaurant or somewhere as most working holidaymakers do. It was possible I was to be fired because of my poor English.
So, I wanted to save even a little money. I started to look for cheap homes online.
Being a boarder of someone else in NZ
Staying at someone’s apartment is normal and popular in NZ. You can stay in a room in someone’s apartment at a lower cost. The kitchen, toilet, living room, and bathroom are shared with hosts.
Weekly rent in NZ is 640 NZD in 2024. In Auckland, the biggest city, where I was going to live, it is 675 NZD. When you stay in a room, you can find some 200~300 NZD homes in Auckland city easily online.
2 ways to look for a room
You just need to find a good home online and contact people in there. You can decide where you live online. I used Facebook and other websites.
Facebook groups
There are a lot of groups where people look for homes or want flatmates. You can look for groups with keywords like New Zealand flatmates. Most groups are limited to regions like Wellington, Auckland, and Northshore. This(Auckland flatemates and flats wanted) is the biggest group on Facebook.
Merit: Easy to access
Facebook is very popular. Some people use it every day. You can check flats while chatting with friends on Facebook.
Demerit1: Can’t search for flats by location, or rent.
You can’t sort flats in your favor. Difficult to compare flats. Posts from people looking for a home and those from people looking for flatmates are mixed. You need to read posts one by one to reach what you want. It is time-consuming.
Demerit2: Not easy to read information.
Posters just write sentences freely. You need to see all sentences to look for your wanted information. Some information might be missing. You need to ask them about it.
Other free websites(Roomies, nzflatmates, Trade Me)
This option is my recommendation. Each of them has different merits shown below. So, I’ll recommend you to use all of these or use one or two, following your needs.
Merit1 You can refine flats by location, and rent.
Home information and flatmates information are apart. Furthermore, you can filter flats and check them effectively. How you can refine flats is different in each website. I showed you the difference below.
Roomies: You can set your budget, preferred location, etc. This website shows you matches.
You can filter flats by location, rent range, and other features.
nzflatmates: You can set your maximum budget, preferred location, etc. This website shows you matches.
You can filter flats by city name.
You can see the distribution of flats and their rents on a map(below).
Trade Me: It doesn’t show you matches. But, you can filter flats well by location, rent range, bedroom and bathroom number, keywords, and other features.
Merit2 A plenty of information is listed and easy to read.
Hosts put way more information than Facebook groups. Some information is illustrated. The biggest difference between the 3 websites is about a map of each flat.
On nzflatmates, a Google map of each flat is embedded. You can easily know about surroundings and routes on Google map.
On Roomies, a map of each flat is available. But, that is not Google Maps, but Mapbox. You need to sign in to get further information from the map.
Trade Me doesn’t have maps. You should search for a map with location names.
I decided my stay; My personal experience
I checked websites frequently and messaged 2 hosts on Roomies. Both of them messaged me back. I decided to stay in a room in Auckland Central. The rent was 200 NZD per week including bill payment(water, electricity, and Internet).
I got a board about 10 days before I arrived in NZ.
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