HOUSES SCARCE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22714, 28 April 1937, Page 12

HOUSES SCARCE

VERY FEW TO LET PROBLEM FOR TENANTS * LAND AGENTS' EXPERIENCE POSITION BECOMES WORSE There are so few houses available for renting in Auckland that some land - agency firms have not been able to | offer their clients any selection for j weeks past, stated several agents yes- J tcrday. Instead of improving with the < approach of winter, the position which j became noticeable about a year ago has become worse, and one agent said he , was forced to confess that he had only j one unfurnished house to let on his j books. _ | "In ordinary times," he said, ' we j would have several boards covered with details of houses we have for j renting, but at present our boards are i practically useless. The shortage is so j acute that our clients seem to have j realised the futility of coming in to ask j if we have any houses available, and ; now it appears that they have tem- i porarilv dispensed with our servicesl and are going back to the old-time ' formula of getting the butcher boy to keep his eyes open." Little Choice Available Apart from those persons who weie wanting to lease houses closer to the city than the ones they were occupying, the general demand was for houses of moderate rentals, from 30s to about £2 ss. One agent said he had several furnished houses for short-term leasing, but the demand for these was no greater than usual. He had only two unfurnished houses to rent, and neither was in the districts most in demand. "Usually we are able to offer our clients a fairly wide selection of houses," said another agent, "and although it very often happens that most tenants are hard to suit, to-day we have no real choice of houses and people have to take, what they can get. We have not leased a house in several months, purely because we have not been able to find houses to let. Lack of Speculative Building An instance was given of a married couple 'who had arrived in Auckland before Christmas. I hey did not want an expensive house, nor one in the centre of the city, but they had been unable to find a house. Another case given was of a married man whose work made it desirable that he should live within reasonable distance of the citv. For the last six months he had been trying without success to find such a house. The number of houses being advertised reflected the position, it was stated. Once it was not unusual to find dozens of houses to let, but now they could generally be counted on the fingers of one hand. Some hope of the position being slightly improved when the State houses at Orakei became available was held out by some of the land agents. Although they were primarily designed as working men's homes, it might bo expected that there would he a general shuffling round. Until then there did not seem to be any hope of a substantial improvement. One particularly noticeable feature of the shortage was the lack of speculative building. Many men who had been kept busy at this sort of trade in predepression years had been forced out of business during the depression, and were now engaged in other pursuits, and there did not seepi to be much hope that they would return to their old business.