NZ Council Rates as a Share of Property Value: What Landlords Actually Pay, by Council

Short answer: across 24 New Zealand councils, median annual rates run from about 0.34% of a property's capital value to about 0.89%. Auckland is the lowest of the lot at 0.336%. Kawerau is the highest at 0.891%. And a Gisborne homeowner pays a bigger dollar bill than the median Aucklander on a house worth roughly half as much.

That last sentence is the part I did not expect when I ran the numbers.

I pulled this from our own council valuation data: 1,375,844 properties across 28 councils, each one with a capital value and an annual rates charge straight off the council's own record. For each council I took the median rates bill and the median capital value, then the median of the ratio. No estimates, no averages skewed by a handful of mansions.

What is the actual percentage, council by council?

Council	Properties	Rates as % of CV	Median rates	Median CV
Kawerau	2,063	0.891%	$3,480	$390,000
Whanganui	19,854	0.812%	$3,851	$490,000
Gisborne	18,037	0.748%	$4,271	$556,000
Hutt City	44,018	0.723%	$5,380	$760,000
Rotorua	27,600	0.720%	$4,301	$610,000
Kapiti Coast	22,864	0.719%	$5,419	$770,000
Porirua	20,026	0.694%	$5,491	$790,000
Waitaki	12,129	0.688%	$3,496	$480,000
Dunedin	44,927	0.674%	$3,898	$590,000
Taranaki	36,786	0.673%	$4,324	$660,000
Horowhenua	17,137	0.667%	$3,879	$580,000
Southland	7,687	0.654%	$4,305	$570,000
Hastings	32,393	0.649%	$4,573	$740,000
Manawatu	13,384	0.607%	$4,034	$640,000
Palmerston North	31,689	0.590%	$3,474	$610,000
Napier	28,784	0.535%	$3,645	$710,000
Hamilton	70,043	0.532%	$3,981	$760,000
Tasman	26,652	0.522%	$4,382	$820,000
Taupo	24,167	0.517%	$4,277	$825,000
Matamata-Piako	16,057	0.493%	$3,858	$770,000
Kaipara	9,074	0.489%	$3,899	$855,000
Upper Hutt	15,896	0.485%	$3,781	$800,000
Thames-Coromandel	27,073	0.446%	$4,539	$950,000
Tauranga	32,508	0.436%	$3,793	$885,000
Waipa	23,757	0.427%	$3,865	$895,000
Western Bay of Plenty	25,057	0.377%	$4,421	$1,100,000
Waikato District	32,909	0.368%	$4,633	$920,000
Auckland	693,273	0.336%	$3,628	$1,080,000

Why does Auckland pay the smallest share?

Because the percentage is not a measure of how much a council charges. It is a measure of how much value there is to spread the charge across.

A council has to fund a broadly fixed set of obligations: roads, water, wastewater, libraries, refuse, consents. That cost base does not shrink because the district's houses are cheaper. So when a council divides roughly fixed spending across a lower total rating valuation, the percentage each ratepayer carries goes up.

Rates themselves are set under the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002, which lets a council strike a general rate on the rateable value of each property in its district. Nothing in that framework ties the percentage to a national benchmark, so the figure each district lands on is a direct function of its own budget divided by its own rating base.

Auckland has enormous total property value to rate against, so it can fund a large budget at 0.336%. Kawerau funds a far smaller budget, but from a far smaller base - a median capital value of $390,000 against Auckland's $1,080,000 - and lands at 0.891%.

This is worth saying plainly, because the obvious headline here would be "greediest councils" and that headline would be wrong. Kawerau is not charging more aggressively than Auckland. It is charging a similar dollar amount from people with far less.

Which is the fairer number to look at, dollars or percentage?

Both, and they tell opposite stories.

In dollars, the biggest median bills are Porirua at $5,491, Kapiti at $5,419 and Hutt City at $5,380. Auckland is near the bottom at $3,628 - less than Gisborne, Whanganui or Kawerau, on property worth two to three times as much.

As a percentage, the order almost reverses at the top end. Auckland drops to last.

The dollar figure is what leaves your bank account. The percentage is what tells you whether your district is asking a lot relative to what you own. If you are comparing where to buy, the percentage matters, because it is the part that scales with the asset you are taking on.

What stands out in the regions?

Wellington's satellites are expensive on both measures. Hutt City, Kapiti Coast and Porirua all sit above 0.69%, and all three carry the largest median bills in the country, above $5,380. Upper Hutt is the outlier of that group at 0.485%.

The lower South Island carries a high share. Waitaki at 0.688% and Dunedin at 0.674% both sit near the top, on median capital values of $480,000 and $590,000.

The Waikato and Bay of Plenty are comparatively light. Waikato District at 0.368%, Western Bay of Plenty at 0.377%, Tauranga at 0.436% and Waipa at 0.427% all sit below half a percent.

Are council rates tax deductible on a rental property?

Yes. Rates on a residential rental are a deductible expense against your rental income in the year you pay them. Inland Revenue lists rates explicitly among the expenses you can deduct from residential rental income, alongside insurance, repairs and maintenance. They are one of the larger fixed costs on most rentals.

The mistake I see is not failing to claim rates. It is claiming them badly: a landlord pays four instalments across the year from a personal account, then at tax time tries to reconstruct which ones belonged to which property. If you own more than one rental in more than one district, that reconstruction is genuinely painful, and it is exactly the kind of thing that gets rounded or guessed.

How should a landlord actually track this?

Record the rates charge against the property, not against the year. Every instalment should be attached to the specific property it belongs to at the moment it is paid, with the invoice kept alongside it.

That way the annual figure assembles itself and your IR3R rental schedule adds up without a reconstruction exercise in July.

Methodology and sources

Every figure comes from RentManager's own council valuation dataset, compiled from New Zealand councils' rating information databases. Data as at 3 August 2026.

• Provenance. Every council is required to keep a rating information database and make it available for public inspection under section 27 of the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002. That public record is the source for every rates figure and capital value here. We compiled it; we did not estimate it.
• Sample: 1,375,844 properties across 28 councils. Only records carrying both an annual rates charge and a capital value greater than zero are included.
• Councils shown: territorial authorities with at least 1,000 qualifying records. Regional councils are excluded: their rates are a separate charge levied on top of the district rate, so listing them beside territorial authorities would not compare like with like. Districts where our capture was incomplete are left out entirely rather than published with a caveat.
• Method: for each council, the median of the per-property ratio of annual rates to capital value. Median rates and median capital value are reported separately, so the percentage column is not simply the fourth column divided by the fifth.
• Coverage: this is not every council in New Zealand. Our dataset is still expanding, and we will republish with wider coverage as more districts are added.
• Capital value is not market value. It is the council's rating valuation. Under section 9 of the Rating Valuations Act 1998 a general revaluation must happen at intervals of not more than three years, so in a moving market a rating valuation will lag actual sale prices.

If you spot a figure that looks wrong for your district, tell us. We would rather correct it than defend it. If you'd rather not track your own rates bills against each property by hand, RentManager logs every instalment against the right property automatically, and rolls it into the annual expense summary at tax time.

Sources and further reading

• Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 - how councils are empowered to set rates, and the public rating information database requirement
• Rating Valuations Act 1998 - the three-yearly revaluation cycle behind every capital value in the table
• Inland Revenue: rental expense deductions - rates as a deductible rental expense
• Department of Internal Affairs: local government - how councils are funded and what rates pay for
• Tenancy Services: rent, bond and bills - what a landlord may and may not pass on to a tenant
• Your own council's rating information database, searchable on that council's website