In most of this collection the cost chapter is where we manage expectations. Here it is the argument. Palmerston North has the best housing value of any North Island city with a base hospital, and on a clinical salary that changes what your life looks like.
Why we don’t print prices
We used to print a weekly rent and a monthly budget table here. We have taken them out. A figure that was true when a page was written is misleading a year later, and a candidate who plans a move around a stale number is worse off than one who plans around none.
What does not go stale is the shape of a month, and the judgement about which lines will surprise you. For today’s actual numbers use the calculators at the foot of the page, and use them to compare Palmerston North against the city you are leaving. That is the only comparison that decides anything.
The thing that matters most
Clinical pay is national. You arrive on the same salary you would earn in Auckland, Tauranga or Wellington, into a housing market that costs a fraction of theirs. That is the entire proposition, and it is unusually clean.
Concretely: a three or four-bedroom family home with a garden, in an established suburb, in a decent school zone, ten minutes from the hospital, is an ordinary purchase on one clinical income here. In Tauranga that is difficult on two. In Auckland it is out of reach for most people we place. If home ownership is part of why you are moving countries, this city does it faster than anywhere else in the North Island.
Go twenty minutes further — Feilding, Ashhurst, Foxton — and the numbers relax again.
Renting, by area
The proportions, for one person on a mid-range budget. Proportions move slowly; prices move every quarter. Rent takes just over half — the smallest absolute rent line of any North Island city with a base hospital.
A flat, compact city is the reason the transport line is this small — most households here run one car rather than two. National agreement pay against the lowest rent in the North Island is the rest of the argument.
Indicative prices that change over time. Note the power line — it is higher here than in the warm north, and that is the one place this city costs you more.
The costs to plan for
Work out your own numbers
How pay, tax, IRD numbers, KiwiSaver and sending money home work is national, and covered in Money, tax & banking.
On a clinical salary you will live comfortably here and buy a family home sooner than almost anywhere else in the North Island. The one place it costs you more is heating a cold house in winter — so spend on insulation, not on postcode.