(I know I promised no more real estate masochism, but I put this together weeks ago! Scroll to the bottom for the other blogs taking part in this real estate roundup)
A little context first, perhaps.
Our CBD is more a place for work/leisure rather than living. There are apartments in town, but in many cases they’re cheap and nasty shoeboxes, with some nice luxury ones at the other end of the spectrum and not much in between. While the Auckland real estate market has soared, apartments have not appreciated in the same way. (Banks have relaxed the rules in the past couple of years but generally you needed a 30-50% deposit when buying an apartment. )To get an idea of how our housing market has grown, there’s a great interactive chart over at The Economist - aside from the craziness that is Hong Kong, NZ is basically on par with Australia and Britain.
The most sought-after places to live are the areas immediately surrounding the CBD. Years ago these were worker bee neighbourhoods, with houses packed up close against each other in narrow streets. A generation on these villas are now the domain of the wealthy and go for seven figures – gentrification! Woot!
Outside of the CBD, standalone houses remain the norm here. You’ll find the odd apartment block or terraced house complex here and there, but in many cases they’re hideous and poorly built. ‘Leaky home’ syndrome also affects a lot of the new standalone homes built in the 1990s/2000s boom.
Finally, very few properties actually get listed with an asking price (as you’ll notice on a few of these links) and most are sold at auction. There’s a lot of guesswork involved if you’re buying a place in Auckland, and council valuations are more often than not just a starting indication – places sell for well over those prices.
Auckland is pretty sprawling, but I’ll be focusing here on the inner city suburbs surrounding the CBD, as well as the CBD itself – roughly within the Outer City Link bus route. This provides a better reflection of the areas where people most want to live. (We don’t really delineate between ‘neighbourhood’ and ‘suburb’ here, certainly not as clearly as some of you might be used to.) According to Google Maps, this area is within about 10km of the CBD.
$250,000
In the CBD, you’ll get a 1, maybe 2 bedroom apartment. The nicer ones might be 50 sq m with one bedroom; the more cramped ones 40 sq m with 2 bedrooms. (There is a listing – that I will not dignify with a link – for a 3 bedroom apartment crammed into less than 50 sq m … that’s half of what a 3 bedroom dwelling should cover.) A carpark is a maybe at this price. Here is a reasonably typical example.
You might find the odd apartment in the fringe suburbs – there aren’t many of those (less than 10 at this very moment, one with ‘weathertightness’ issues). At this price point they’d be 1 bedroom.
$500,000
This would get you a somewhat decent apartment, with carpark even, in the CBD or surrounds. Like this.
In the inner suburbs $500k will barely stretch to a small , 1-2 bedroom unit in a block. These most often come in rows of 4. Here’s a typical example, as pictured above.
$750,000
In the CBD, you get a pretty nice, roomy apartment. Maybe this one?
In the inner suburbs, this is still entry-level territory. You’ll get nothing special; houses in this bracket might even still be do-ups that need work. Example here.
$1,000,000
There are about five CBD apartments listed in this price bracket (but yes, they are lovely).
In the inner suburbs, it’ll get you a classic 3 bedroom bungalow or villa (here’s a do-up, and here’s a renovated one), or a newer build house. Or a condemned hovel on some prime land.
Why not rent instead?
Alas, while renting might be cheaper, it might literally kill you. The standard of rental housing here is ridiculously low. See my most recent rants here, here and here.
REAL ESTATE COMPARISON IN OTHER CITIES
CANADA
- Save. Spend. Splurge.: Montreal
- Urban Departures: Toronto
- Financial Diffraction: Halifax
- Money after Graduation: Calgary
U.S.A.
- Frugal Portland: Portland
- Broke and Beautiful: New York
- Michelle of Shop my Closet: Denver
- Paul of Don’t Quit your Day Job: Silicon Valley / South Bay Area
- Red Debted Stepchild: Bergen County, NJ