Moving Around New Zealand

Okay, so you're probably pretty keen on moving to New Zealand.
New Zealanders have been moving too though. We discover where New Zealanders prefer living in New Zealand. The results will probably surprise you.

We're Leaving

New Zealanders have been on the move during the last few years. Most of the movement has been focussed on better weather, better prospects or lower house prices.

The three regions people have been keenest to leave are:
  • Auckland, North Island
  • Manawatu-Wanganui, North Island
  • Southland, South Island
Auckland's house prices have risen to extraordinary heights in recent years. Although falling prices and falling interest rates have improved affordability in 2008, most people benefit financially from leaving Auckland, provided they don't lose too much income. Retired people can often release a large capital sum by leaving Auckland and moving to a cheaper location. Many retirees move to the Waikato, a region to the south of Auckland, or Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty.

Southland is a rural area with no large cities that has suffered from depopulation. Thankfully, owing to a revival in the fortunes of the dairying industry, there is more optimism in New Zealand's rural areas than there was a few years ago. Export prices for dairy products in the first decade of the twenty-first century have been substantially higher than they were during much of the depressed 1990s. As a result of this, farm incomes and the value of dairy farms - and agricultural land in general - have risen substantially. Prior to the revival, many rural regions had been depressed and people had been moving elsewhere in New Zealand or moving to Australia. New Zealanders enjoy automatic residence rights in Australia, so it is an easy move to make.

Would the last person to leave please switch off the lights?

Between 1998 and 2000 more people left New Zealand than arrived. Around 450,000 New Zealanders currently live in Australia. The flow of departures for Australia was stemmed for a few years because of the improving economic situation in New Zealand, particularly increased job opportunities. The flow has now increased again, to near record levels.

The average working family from New Zealand is around NZ$5,000 p.a. better off living in Australia than in New Zealand. Australia's economy has been booming as a result of rapidly rising prices for its mineral and mining exports. Demand for Australia's mining exports from Asia's rapidly growing economies, particularly China, has also grown rapidly. Australia has used part of the proceeds of its economic boom to lower taxes while New Zealand has been using the proceeds of its growth to introduce means-tested tax-credits for families with children.

In the table below, we show the number of people New Zealand has gained or lost through migration in each of the last fifteen years. Even in the years of outward migration, New Zealand's population continued to grow because births exceeded deaths and departures.

Moving To New Zealand (and away)
New Zealand's Population Gains (and Losses) through Migration
To July of the Indicated Year

YearPopulation Gains/Losses
1993+11,000
1994+19,000
1995+25,000
1996+25,000
1997+10,000
1998-7,000
1999-10,000
2000-10,000
2001+5,000
2002+38,000
2003+42,500
2004+20,600
2005+6,900
2006+12,100
2007+9,000
2008+5,200


The people of Southland's main city, Invercargill, were very aware of an exodus. In ten years, the city's population had dropped from over 56 thousand to below 50 thousand. But Invercargill has fought back and has managed to reverse the exodus, with a small gain of 500 people in the last few years. Its council launched an innovative drive to attract students to the town by offering them zero-fee education at the Southern Institute of Technology. Economists advised the council that the predicted 1,000 extra students would bring more money to the local economy than the zero-fee scheme would cost.

The Best Places To Live In New Zealand

The 2006 census figures from StatisticsNZ - these are the most recent available - reveal four regions New Zealanders have been keenest to move to. These are:
  • Canterbury, (Christchurch)
  • Bay of Plenty, (Tauranga)
  • Waikato
  • Otago
Many are surprised that Auckland does not feature as the main destination for relocating New Zealanders. Auckland's population is indeed growing quickly, fuelled by immigration and births, and half of all migrants to New Zealand live in the Auckland area.

But, as we have seen above, more New Zealanders have been moving out of the Auckland Region than moving in, particularly people aged 30 years and over. Canterbury, Bay Of Plenty, Waikato and Otago are the regions where New Zealanders prefer to relocate to in New Zealand. Between 2001 and 2006, Canterbury gained more than 8,000 residents from other parts of New Zealand, while Bay of Plenty and Waikato each gained over 5,000 and Otago gained 4,500.

(This continues a trend seen in the previous five-year period when, between 1996 and 2001, Canterbury and Bay of Plenty each gained more than 8,000 people from relocation within New Zealand.) At the same time, Auckland lost about 2,500 people to other New Zealand regions.

The Bay of Plenty, and especially its main town of Tauranga, have become popular retirement areas owing to their warm, sunny climate.

Canterbury is now home to more than half of the South Island's population. Christchurch, the main city, is often said to be the precision engineering and electronics capital of New Zealand.

Waikato has a number of pleasant, small towns close to the city of Hamilton and Otago offers very affordable housing close to or in the university city of Dunedin.