What the census says about South Auckland homes
Rented, often from Kāinga Ora
Māngere-Ōtāhuhu (56.5%), Ōtara-Papatoetoe (66.9%) and Manurewa (68.2%) had Auckland's lowest shares of renters with a private landlord. In Ōtara, 72% of households didn't own the home they lived in.
Built as state housing
The area was mostly farmland until the Southern Motorway came through from the mid-1950s. Large state housing areas followed in the 1960s and 1970s, including planned suburbs in Ōtara and Māngere.
Damp and mould
In Māngere-Ōtāhuhu, 32.6% of occupied homes were always or sometimes damp in 2023, and 10.1% always had mould bigger than an A4 sheet. The damp figure was 30.1% in Ōtara-Papatoetoe and 26.9% in Manurewa.
Homes with no heat
No heating at all was the answer in 9.4% of Māngere-Ōtāhuhu homes and 8.6% in Ōtara-Papatoetoe, against 2.4% nationally, and 4.3% of Ōtara-Papatoetoe homes leaned on a portable gas heater.
Humid nights
Of the Auckland stations NIWA lists, Ardmore has the highest mean 9 am humidity: 88% over the year and 92% in June and July.
Papakura is building
Papakura's occupied dwellings grew 26.4% between 2018 and 2023.
If you're the landlord
The heating standard asks for a fixed heater that can directly heat the main living room, with the minimum capacity worked out by Tenancy Services' heating assessment tool. A heat pump is judged on the nominal heating capacity on its label, tested at 7 degrees, not the range. Unflued gas heaters never count.
The ventilation standard needs a kitchen and a bathroom extractor fan that vent outside. Tenancy Services says recirculating systems, products like HRV and DVS systems, aren't suitable to meet it.
No installer can promise compliance for you. One who does rental work every week will ask for the tool's result before quoting.
If you rent, or own your home
Renting? The heat pump is the landlord's call, but you can ask for the home's healthy homes compliance information, which the landlord must hand over within 21 days. Where filters are easy to reach, cleaning them falls to the tenant.
Own a character home? Ōtāhuhu and Station Road, Papatoetoe are Special Character Areas. For Station Road, the Unitary Plan asks whether air conditioning units are sympathetic to the house in colour, design, form and location.
Own and live in your home? Warmer Kiwi Homes is EECA's programme and EECA decides who's eligible, so check with EECA before you sign with anyone. Our Warmer Kiwi Homes guide explains it.
When you're ready, tell us about the house. Installers who do this work, and whose registrations we've checked, see the job, and only the one who takes it gets your details.
What we'd do
What we'd do first
In a damp, cold house we'd go in this order: extractor fans that really vent outside, then a correctly sized heat pump for the main living room, then the portable gas heater gone for good. BRANZ doesn't recommend any unflued gas heater, and EHINZ says they put water vapour, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide into the room.