A ski town an hour from Christchurch has become the latest test of whether New Zealand’s short-term rental boom is worth what it costs the people who live there all year.
Methven, in Mid Canterbury, has fewer than 1000 homes. Ashburton District Council estimates that between 130 and 170 of them are being let to visitors through Airbnb and similar platforms, although the council concedes that figure is an estimate rather than a count. A search of Airbnb’s own listings turns up more than 200 places to stay in and around the town.
In reporting published on 19 August, RNZ found the subject dominating conversation in a town where few people want to be quoted about it. One newcomer, Julianne, said she had noticed it within weeks of arriving.
“I’m just trying to buy a house and a lot of the houses are going for an extremely higher price because they’re going into Airbnbs rather than for the people that live here,” she said.
The numbers behind that frustration are stark. Average property values in Methven rose by almost 70 percent between 2018 and 2024, from $380,000 to $640,000. The latest census figures show more than 13 percent of the town’s homes were unoccupied on census night.
Home owner Paul Dixey told RNZ the character of his neighbourhood was changing, and drew a line between people letting a spare room and what he sees as commercial operations in residential streets.
“We’ve got nothing against the small Airbnbs which the council allow in a ‘residential c’ environment, but we’re against the big ones that are taking in 10 to 12, 15 people, which we believe are just really commercial entities,” he said. “To a certain extent, they’re invading the residential suburbs of Methven and that’s putting pressure on the housing market.”
On his own street, Dixey counted roughly 15 to 20 houses, about four of them listed for short stays. “We’ve had one here that got resource consent to have 12 or more people and immediately the house across the road applied for the same,” he said. “Luckily the neighbours either side of it objected and it didn’t pass but according to council everyone in the street could apply.”
The reason nobody knows the real number is written into the rules. Ashburton District Council’s group manager compliance and development, Ian Hyde, said small operations need no permission at all.
“Within residential zones short-term lets are permitted for up to a maximum of five guests per night and in rural zones 10 is allowed,” Hyde said. “If within those rules, no neighbour’s approval or registration with council is needed. Anything beyond those numbers is generally considered a discretionary activity and requires a land use consent.” The thresholds sit in the council’s district plan.
Dixey said he had seen a pattern of people building accommodation of a commercial scale and applying for consent afterwards. He wants the rules that already exist enforced rather than rewritten.
Methven Community Board chairperson Megan Fitzgerald said the town is trying to hold two things at once. “Everyone is in agreement that we can’t have a ghost town,” she said. “We need to have our residents here as part of our community but we also can’t stifle that economic growth.”
She pointed out that a booked-out house is not an empty one, and that visitors on the street in the middle of winter are a sign of a town doing well. But she was blunt about where the limit sits. “A community is more than just money coming in and that’s where I come back to the residents,” she said.
The people who have always run beds in Methven have a narrower complaint, and it is about cost rather than character. Methven Motels and Apartments owner Warren Nisbet said his compliance bill is not one his newer competitors carry.
“Building warrant of fitness, the fire service come once a year, we have a monthly check of our fire alarms, and probably the Airbnbs haven’t got a fire exit plan as such, which we’ve got to produce every year and upgrade it if necessary,” he said.
Not everyone thinks the town is losing. Mt Hutt Ski Area manager James McKenzie said the early fears of a Queenstown-style takeover have not been borne out. “Methven’s got a really special character,” he said. “It’s the sort of town where you walk along the street and you still stop to chat to people, people wave as they drive down the street.”
He argued the extra beds have made the town viable as a destination in a way the old model could not. “Methven is certainly a growing town and the old hotel model is hard to sustain, certainly in a place like Methven where you don’t get that year-round continuity of business,” he said.
Methven is a small version of an argument playing out across the country, and the enforcement gap it has run into is not unusual. Christchurch City Council took on a compliance officer in August 2025 and, as The Spinoff reported in February, found 41 of about 50 properties it investigated were not complying with the rules. Ten went back to being long-term rentals and two were sold.
Queenstown Lakes has gone furthest, charging steeply higher rates once a property is let beyond 28 days a year and higher again past 180 days. Even there the council says it cannot see the whole picture, because platforms will not hand over addresses. Mayor John Glover has argued for national rules that would force them to.
The empty-home share is worth keeping in perspective. Across New Zealand as a whole, the proportion of private dwellings empty on census night rose from 10.2 percent in 2018 to 10.8 percent in 2023, according to Infometrics analysis of census data. Methven sits above that, but not by the margin the debate sometimes implies.
Explore the data. Methven is too small to appear in the national price series, but the same squeeze shows up in the towns around it. See how house prices and the years of household income it takes to buy have moved across 18 New Zealand cities since 2001 in our interactive house price tool.
Fitzgerald said the community board is working with the council on getting the policy settings right, and that nobody should expect a clean answer. “There are always going to be differing views,” she said. “Someone said to me once, ‘the best policy that you can create is one that no one loves but everyone can agree to’. I think that’s really important to keep in mind, we’re not going to find a silver bullet. We’re not going to get rid of all the Airbnbs but we’re not also going to become a town full of Airbnbs.”
What do you think? Has short-term letting changed your town for better or worse, and should councils be enforcing the rules they already have. Leave a comment below and tell us what you have seen where you live.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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