The national median rent has had the biggest annual increase in seven months with a gain of 8.5 percent.
Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
Rents advertised on online platform TradeMe rose $45 to a record-breaking national median of $575 per week in February.
"In the past 12 months we've seen rents rise consistently and every month it gets more expensive to rent a property in New Zealand," TradeMe sales diretor Gavin Lloyd said.
Porirua has the highest rent at $700 a week.
Records were reached in Bay of Plenty, Northland and Taranaki, while the number of properties available to rent dropped 6 percent over the year earlier.
The drop in the number of properties available to rent coincided with a 4 percent drop in demand, with Wellington demand down 10 percent and Auckland down 12 percent.
In the main centres, Wellington's median rent rose more than 12 percent to $650 a week, Canterbury's rose 9 percent to $480 and Auckland's rose just 1.7 percent to $600.