HILLSBOROUGH, SOUTHERN ISTHMUS — AUCKLAND

A tired mid-century rental brought up to standard, re-laid out and made tenant-ready in six weeks

Completed 2018

Quick answer: This was a full rental property renovation in Hillsborough, Auckland — a run-down mid-century home re-laid out room by room, brought up to insulation and health-and-safety standard, and finished tenant-ready in a six-week programme.

An Investment Property in Hillsborough That Needed Bringing Back to Standard

This was a rental property renovation in Hillsborough — a home Alma had tenanted out for years. It had slipped into a bad state of disrepair and wasn’t returning what a property that size should. She’d called around. Most companies quoted her roughly six months on site, which for a landlord carrying a vacant rental is a long time to be earning nothing.

When she got in touch with us, the scope was clearly going to be a challenge. Kevin Yang scheduled an on-site visit and walked the house. A few things were obvious straight away. The property was a health and safety hazard, it didn’t meet the current insulation requirements, the kitchen and bathroom layouts didn’t work, and the place needed real refurbishment to extend its life rather than another coat of paint over the problems.

The brief settled into three plain goals: make the house safe to live in, get it compliant with New Zealand’s insulation rules, and lift it to a standard that would let Alma re-let it properly. She wasn’t sure where to start, so we drew up a six-week plan and worked to it. This Hillsborough property is one of many whole-home renovations our Auckland team has delivered — first walk-through to final finish.

“On a rental, the trap is spending money where a tenant never sees it and skipping the things that actually protect the property. We went the other way — fix what makes the house safe and compliant first, then spend the finishing budget where it lifts the rent.”
— Kevin Yang, Managing Director, Superior Renovations

Why a Hillsborough Rental Like This One Needs More Than a Repaint

Hillsborough sits on Auckland’s southern isthmus, looking over the Manukau Harbour between Mount Roskill, Three Kings, Lynfield and Onehunga. Most of the housing stock here went up through the mid-century — weatherboard and brick-and-tile homes on sloping sections. They’re solid houses, but a lot of them are now decades past their last real update, and rentals tend to be the last in the queue for one.

That’s the situation we walked into. A house that had been worked hard as a rental, never properly brought up to standard, and starting to cost its owner in lost rent and deferred problems. On a place like this the temptation is always to paint over the issues and re-let. We’ve seen where that leads — the leak comes back, the insulation still isn’t there, and the next vacancy costs more than the first.

The Six-Week Programme, Week by Week

Other companies had told Alma to expect around six months. We mapped the whole job to six weeks and held to it — the gain of running every trade under one programme rather than booking them one after another. Here’s how it ran.

Week 1 — Demolition, Plumbing and Repair Work

We started with the bathroom, the most involved part of the job because we were changing the layout completely to make it more spacious and usable. Out came the shower box, the bath, every cabinet, the vanity and the flooring. Behind it we found what we expected in a house this age — a leak to chase down. We pulled the liner and underlay, fixed the leak at the source, and stripped the damaged GIB off the walls.

From there into plumbing, building work and the first fit. New GIB to the bathroom, fresh underlay, and full waterproofing across the floors and walls before anything went back in. The space was tight, so we built custom cabinetry sized to suit rather than forcing in something off the shelf.

Week 2 — Bathroom Fixtures and Flooring

Working a small bathroom means a lot of the fittings have to be made to measure. Our supplier runs a manufacturing factory here in Auckland, so we had the shower and vanity custom-built inside two weeks. Because we’d taken every measurement on the first site visit, it was all ready when we needed it.

We also fixed a layout fault the house had lived with for years — the laundry opened into the kitchen instead of the bathroom. We built a wall between laundry and kitchen and reconnected the laundry through to the bathroom, where it belonged. Then the custom shower box, new vanity and cabinet, new toilet, all tapware and the laundry pipework went in, followed by wall and floor tiling. Electrical finished the week — LED lighting, vanity power, and the mirror.

Week 3 — Reworking the Kitchen Layout

The kitchen was a cramped little room that opened into the laundry. First we closed off the opening into the laundry. Then we took out the two walls separating the lounge from the kitchen. The plan was a single open-plan kitchen and lounge — far more usable, and far more appealing to a tenant.

We added an island between the lounge and kitchen, which gives the space a natural divider and somewhere to pull up bar stools. During the week we stripped out all the old cabinets, the bench tops, the hot water cylinder and cabinet, the built-in pantry side door and the lino, and ran all the new kitchen plumbing.

Week 4 — Flooring Out, Kitchen In, and the Ceiling Surprise

The week was meant to be straightforward — lift the flooring through the lounge, dining and kitchen, then install the new kitchen. Then it wasn’t. Prepping the lounge for the following week’s painting, we found the ceiling was leaking and had rotted from the inside.

Alma had been advised before, by other companies, to just paint over it. When Kevin assessed it, painting over the rot was plainly the wrong call — it hides the problem, it doesn’t fix it, and it fails the health and safety standard the whole job was meant to meet. So we brought in a standby team to strip the ceiling, install proper insulation and rebuild it, while the regular team carried on lifting the floors. At the same time the kitchen crew fitted the GIB and underlay and installed the lot — cabinets, pantry, custom bench top, island bar, splashback, cooktop, rangehood, dishwasher, oven, LED lighting, the sink wall and all the appliance power.

This is the part of a rental renovation a landlord can’t see in a photo and can’t afford to skip. A rotting, leaking ceiling left under fresh paint is exactly the kind of hidden fault that ends a tenancy early and costs far more the second time around.

Week 5 — Flooring, Electrical and Paint

We laid laminate through the lounge, engineered wood laminate in the bedrooms and tile in the kitchen. Tiles, carpet and laminate were all chosen in light tones to keep a small house feeling open. A central alarm and a heating-cooling system went in the same week.

To bring the place back properly we stripped every wall of dated wallpaper. It’s tempting to paint straight over old paper, but it never holds — the paint cracks and the walls never look right. So off it came. Most of the week was plastering and sanding walls and ceilings throughout, then painting walls, ceilings, door frames, doors, window frames and skirting across both bedrooms, the lounge, bathroom and kitchen.

Week 6 — New Deck, Final Touches

Alma’s deck was falling apart and she asked whether we could restore it. The timber had rotted past saving, so restoring wasn’t honest — we demolished it and built a new deck in its place. Because we built within the footprint of the existing deck, which already held consent, no new consent was required. We finished the week touching up paint through the house and connecting the pipes and gas cylinder.

What the Renovation Delivered for the Owner

• A house that was safe, compliant and looked brand new — insulation, ceiling and waterproofing all brought up to standard.
• A reworked, open-plan layout through the kitchen and lounge, and a bathroom and laundry that finally made sense.
• A property repositioned to re-let at a materially stronger rate than before the work — value built through scope and standard, not cosmetics.
• A six-week turnaround against the six months Alma had been quoted elsewhere — far less time off the rental market.

💡 Quick tip: On a rental, spend first on the things a building inspection or a tenant’s health is judged by — insulation, weathertightness, waterproofing — then put the finishing budget into the kitchen and bathroom, where it does the most for rentability. Cosmetic-only refreshes on an older house almost always cost more at the next vacancy.

What a Whole-House Rental Renovation Costs in Auckland

Every renovation is priced to its own scope — how much structural and compliance work is hiding behind the walls, how many rooms change layout, and the standard of the finish all move the number. A rental brief like Alma’s is built around durable, tenant-ready choices rather than top-end finishes, which keeps the spend sensible without cutting the things that protect the property. Rather than quote a figure that won’t match your place, use our renovation cost calculators to get a realistic Auckland estimate for your own project.

💡 Quick tip: On older Auckland homes the single biggest cost risk isn’t the kitchen or bathroom — it’s what gets found once the linings come off, like the rotted ceiling on this job. Budget a contingency for hidden weathertightness and insulation work before you lock your scope.

The Owner’s Experience

“I’m absolutely amazed with the results with my property — with the quality of workmanship, with professionalism. They handled every single detail. It was absolutely fantastic.”
— Alma Uka, Hillsborough

Thinking About Renovating an Auckland Rental?

If you’re a landlord sitting on an older Hillsborough or wider Auckland property that’s underperforming, the work that lifts rent is usually the work you can’t see in a listing photo — insulation, weathertightness and a layout that actually suits a tenant. We handle the whole job under one programme, from the first walk-through to a tenant-ready handover.

For the rooms that do the heavy lifting on rentability, see our kitchen renovation and bathroom renovation pages.

➡ Book your free in-home consultation with Superior Renovations
➡ Estimate your renovation with our Auckland cost calculators
➡ Request a free feasibility report for your project

Rental Property Renovation in Hillsborough — FAQ

Further Resources

1. More completed Auckland renovation projects
2. Real client stories from across Auckland