Woodside Lodge is a friendly boarding house at 2 Woodside Road, Mt Eden — one of Auckland’s best-loved central suburbs. Private rooms from $250 a week, with power, water and unlimited internet all included. No hidden costs, no season of flat-hunting: ask today, move in this week.
Most of our working-holiday guests have come from Italy, France and Portugal — and the house has always loved its Italians most of all. Italian guests are especially welcome.
The lodge is a heritage villa on a quiet corner just off Mount Eden Road, at the top of Auckland’s central isthmus. Mt Eden Village — the cafés, bakeries, barbers, bookshop and grocers that give the suburb its name — is a few minutes’ walk up the road. Maungawhau / Mount Eden, the highest natural point in the city, is twenty minutes on foot. The city centre is four kilometres away, and the bus that takes you there stops at the end of the street.
Sources: suburb.co.nz suburb index; Stats NZ place summaries (2026).
Mt Eden (Maungawhau) is a leafy, safe, central suburb about four kilometres from downtown Auckland. Walk to the summit of the volcanic cone for the best view in the city; wander Mt Eden Village for cafés and bakeries; the famous Dominion Road food strip — Auckland’s best cheap eats — is minutes away. Eden Park, New Zealand’s biggest stadium, is in walking distance for match nights.
Google Maps: 2 Woodside Rd → Britomart ↗Google Maps: 2 Woodside Rd → University of Auckland ↗at.govt.nz — journey planner ↗at.govt.nz — AT HOP card ↗at.govt.nz — 40% student concession ↗
Mt Eden is one of Auckland’s oldest and most sought-after central suburbs: heritage villas, wide tree-lined streets, and neighbours who are mostly professional families, academics and long-settled owners. It sits inside the “double grammar” school zone that families compete to live in, and the median house on these streets is valued at over two million dollars. Independent suburb ratings put it at 80/100 for safety and a full 100/100 for amenities. None of that is about the room — it is about the walk home at eleven at night, and about what your family can look up when you tell them the address.
Twenty-three private rooms across the lodge. Each room is yours alone, with a lock on the door. The kitchen, bathrooms and laundry are shared and kept in order. Rent is weekly and covers electricity, water and unlimited wifi — the price you see is the whole price. The paperwork is done on your phone in minutes: agreement, rent record and receipts all live in your own online portal, in plain language.
Most people who ask about a room here landed in New Zealand a week ago. There is no credit history to produce, no year-long lease to sign, no furniture to buy and no power account to open in your name. Your room comes furnished with a bed, desk, wardrobe, heating and unlimited wifi; power and water are in the rent. Stay three months or three years — rent is weekly and the agreement is written in plain English.
Students, apprentices, working people new to Auckland, and people getting back on their feet. If Work and Income supports you, we are a registered MSD supplier — your rent can be paid directly from your benefit, so it is never late and never a worry. Everyone signs the same clear agreement and gets the same fair deal.
You do not have to be in New Zealand to take a room. Tell us the day you land and the room is yours from that day — no viewing queue, no competing with forty other people at an open home in your first jet-lagged week.
You can send your first week (and the deposit, if one is agreed) by international bank transfer before you fly — once the room is confirmed the manager sends you the account number, the bank’s address and the SWIFT/BIC code directly. Or pay by card or cash when you check in. Either way, nothing is charged before you have arrived and seen the room.
Our bank details come only from the manager, on 027 766 6799, and they do not change. If account details for Woodside Lodge reach you from anyone else, or a different account number appears in an email, it is a scam — ring that number and check before you send money.
It is a house, not a hostel and not a hall of residence: twenty-three people from a dozen countries, dinner on the back deck through the summer, the veranda in the evening, and quiet after ten so whoever is on an early shift can sleep.
All photographs are of this house. Two of the rooms are shown styled, to show what the space can look like — the furniture in any particular room may differ, so ask to see the room you are taking.
Mt Eden is one of the best-placed suburbs in Auckland for a weekend with no car. Open any of these to read more.
Auckland’s highest natural point at 196 metres, with a grassy crater fifty metres deep and a 360-degree view over the city and both harbours. It is twenty minutes on foot from the lodge and free to walk up, open from 7am (to 8.30pm in summer, 7pm in winter). Cars have not been allowed at the summit since 2016, so everyone walks the road or the dirt track. A boardwalk rings the crater rim; the crater itself is tapu — sacred — and is never entered. Dogs are not allowed on the maunga.
maunga.nz — Tūpuna Maunga Authority ↗aucklandcouncil.govt.nz — the summit walk ↗aucklandnz.com ↗albomadventures.com — photographs ↗lonelyplanet.com ↗
A few minutes up Mount Eden Road: Circus Circus, Altar Cafe in a restored villa, the Chapter book and tea shop, De Post in the 1886 post office building, barbers, bakeries and op shops. The Village Centre, in the old Methodist church, runs free Music in Eden concerts on Friday lunchtimes and a craft market on Saturdays.
mounteden.co.nz — every shop and café ↗firsttimetravels.com — a visitor’s guide ↗
Ten minutes’ walk west and you are on New Zealand’s most famous food strip: dumplings, hand-pulled noodles, hot pot, Vietnamese, Malaysian and Indian — most of it under fifteen dollars and much of it open late.
A 5.5-acre garden built into an old quarry on the eastern slope of the maunga — camellias, waterfalls, a tulip festival in spring and a quiet café to sit in. A short walk, and only a few dollars to get in.
New Zealand’s biggest stadium is about twenty-five minutes’ walk: All Blacks tests, Blues and Auckland FC matches, cricket through the summer and the largest concerts that come here. On match nights the whole neighbourhood walks over.
Windmill Park and Melville Park are across Mount Eden Road, and Nicholson Park has astro tennis courts you can book by the hour. The Eden Epsom Tennis and Squash Club is around the corner on Penrhyn Road. Potters Park, ten minutes away, has the city’s first splash pad.
aucklandcouncil.govt.nz — Potters Park ↗aucklandcouncil.govt.nz — pools and splash pads ↗
Twenty minutes on the bus puts you at Britomart, Commercial Bay, the Viaduct and the ferry terminal. Devonport is a twelve-minute sailing, Waiheke Island forty minutes, and Rangitoto — the volcano on the skyline — is a half-day walk.
fullers.co.nz — ferry timetables ↗aucklandnz.com — what is on in the city ↗
Piha’s black sand and the Waitākere Ranges are an hour west, Muriwai’s gannet colony an hour north-west, and Hobbiton and the Coromandel about two hours south. The long-distance bus and the airport shuttle both leave from the central city, on your bus route.
aucklandcouncil.govt.nz — Piha ↗aucklandnz.com — the Waitākere Ranges ↗
Tell us who you are and how to reach you — the manager answers the same day.