Emma Pearce says it's tough to be a tenant in Northland at the moment.

Whangarei woman Emma Pearce has moved three times in the past two years and says being a tenant is tough going.

"Renting in Northland is hard. It's an uneasy feeling not having the stability with young children," she says.

"Demand is high and rental prices are high. I actually ran out of time to find a healthy home for my asthmatic son within my price range, due to a lack of rentals."

She has moved in with family while she looks for a new home.

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Another woman, Wanda Peers, is also feeling the strain.

"We want to buy up here but we can't so we are staying renting until we find something. We are renting from family as we have pets and it's $325 a week which is cheap but not on one wage plus animals and a toddler."

New data from Barfoot & Thompson shows Northland rents increased 27 per cent between 2013 and 2018, to an average of more than $350 a week.

That compares to just 15 per cent growth in central Auckland over the same period. The cheapest part of Auckland - Franklin/rural Manukau - had average rent of just over $400.

Economist Shamubeel Eaqub said Northland's rental growth was extraordinary and would put significant pressure on people's disposable incomes.

He said provincial New Zealand had become used to operating on the assumption that a certain number of people would leave each year. Now, they were not, and populations were growing quickly, putting pressure on housing stock.

Auckland is the country's fastest-growing region but Northland and Waikato are close behind.

"The provinces are more sensitive to imbalances," Eaqub said.

"The rate of building tends to be small so sudden changes in population growth have a huge impact."

Smaller centres also had higher percentages of renters and more limited rental stock, he said.

Across Auckland as a whole, average rents lifted by $22 a week, or 4 per cent over 2017.

West Auckland had the largest increase for the city in the year, up 5.5 per cent.

The real estate agency said central Auckland was the priciest area on its books, with average weekly rent above $900. Between 2013 and 2015, the cost of rent for central city apartments dropped but it has rebounded since.

Eaqub said he had been surprised at how slow the rate of rent increases had been in Auckland, given the attention the city's housing shortages received. "Rents are an indication of shortage and it's showing that the shortages are more acute in the smaller regions. But it's easier to resolve because you don't need to build that many houses."

Barfoot & Thompson said cheaper areas had experience faster rent growth over the past five years.

But property investors aren't necessarily making more money. Property management firm Crockers said low interest rates and prices rising quickly had contributed to a drop of more than one percentage point in average Auckland rental yields since the end of 2011.

But it warned gradual increases in interest rates during 2019 and 2020 would start to put more upward pressure on rents.

Ten per cent of the landlords it surveyed said the requirement to insulate, and meet other higher rental property standards, were affecting Auckland rents.

"Tenants are likely to have more ability to pay higher rents in coming quarters. Contributing factors to this enhanced ability include a lift in the Accommodation Supplement from April 1, 2018, a pick-up in income growth as the labour market continues to tighten, and the Labour-led government's proposed minimum wage increases through to 2021. Thus conditions are likely to be conducive to faster rental inflation over the next two to three years," Crockers said.