Also Wellington rates are the lowest of the cities.
I was interested in this, so here are the rates in each city for a $500k house, and you're right (assuming P-town's is more than Wellington's which, when you consider that Q1 on their Rates FAQ is "Why are my rates so high in Porirua?", I suspect it is safe to do).
| Resi Rates on a $0.5m house. | ||
| Hutt | $2634.20 | |
| Wgtn | $2374.01 | |
| P-town | Too hard to work out/unhelpful website | |
| Boganville | $2575.40 | |
I didn't look at commercial rates but stumbled across this which suggests Wellington's are some of the highest in New Zealand...
http://www.propertynz.co.nz/media/wysiwyg/pdf/Myth...
They're also quite a lot lower than Auckland and Christchurch.
Wellington has a large CBD for a city of 200k, because it really is a CBD for the 500k residents in the region (who are highly service orientated as there is very little manufacturing), there is no doubt that the commercial rates are subsidising the residential rates to a much larger extent than anywhere else in the country. On the other hand, the Wellington rate payers also pay for a lot of the services and events that people from the commuting cities enjoy. It's the second biggest CBD in the country, and gets the most foot traffic so you'd expect commercial rates would be second to Auckland.
If we did join as one city I wonder if rates will go up in Wellington but fall in some of the other cities in the region.