Last year the Auckland Plan was released with much fanfare. Here, finally, we had a 30 year strategic document guiding the whole of Auckland – particularly in terms of guiding our approach to where, when and how Auckland should grow. Of course the Auckland Plan wasn’t perfect and had a heap of internal contradictions: supposedly being a transformational shift to public transport while proposing to spend most of the future transport budget on roads, supposedly proposing a quality compact city while actually enabling a massive amount of sprawl.
Nevertheless, the Auckland Plan came up with a development strategy for Auckland to guide where more intensive and less intensive development should occur over time. Which centres were of particular importance, which key transport projects would be built to support that growth, what the split between intensification and sprawl would be, and many other things. They all came together in this key diagram – which effectively is the Auckland Plan in a nutshell:
For areas other than the centres, which are indicated by dots, the key distinction between different parts of Auckland is between those where moderate change, some change or least change is proposed. There’s then a key to this map which outlines what moderate change, some change and least change might mean:
Moderate change. Areas identified for growth throughout the existing urban area. Includes most local centres and a range of neighbourhoods. New housing would be mostly attached; low-rise apartments and terraced houses up to 3 or 4 storeys. Up to a third of sites estimated to be redeveloped over 30- year period in these areas. Will include some small lot detached and semidetached housing.
Some change. Areas not identified as priorities for growth. Some intensified development expected to occur. May include some small lot detached and semi-detached housing. The Unitary Plan will explore innovative ways of allowing high-quality residential infill and redevelopment in these areas.
Least change. Generally areas with existing historic character zoning and the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area. Not expected to accommodate significant numbers of new buildings although sympathetic development will occur where appropriate.
A few key observations can be quickly made from looking at the map above:
- Most of the isthmus is categorised as “Moderate Change” aside from areas clearly identified as least change due to heritage considerations. This is because the isthmus is market attractive for intensification and generally has comparatively good public transport.
- On the North Shore, Moderate Change is focused in areas with good proximity to the coast – because they’re likely to be market attractive for intensification.
- In the south and west the Moderate Change areas are generally focused around the railway stations.
Now compare the Auckland Plan development strategy with the basic zoning pattern of the Unitary Plan:
I’ve included the isthmus, west and north shore areas because they stand out the most as being extremely different to what’s in the Auckland Plan. In the isthmus there is very little that could be considered in the moderate change category with huge swathes of either single house zone or mixed housing suburban. The same is true for the North Shore, which has significantly shifted away from enabling growth in coastal areas towards, well, seemingly not enabling much growth at all except for in Northcote (where the poor people who didn’t moan live) and on a couple of blocks in Takapuna. The west does kind of follow the Auckland Plan but with a much broader brush.
We can forever argue the merits of whether it’s better for Auckland to upzone for intensification in places where people moan about it the least (clearly in the west) or in locations where upzoning might lead to a lot of redevelopment (like the isthmus), but the inescapable fact is that the Unitary Plan presents an entirely different vision for Auckland’s future urban form than what was proposed in the Auckland Plan. Did nobody pick this up during the rezoning process? Did anybody actually care that 18 months of enormous public input on the Auckland Plan was basically thrown out the window through (by the sound of it) a bunch of panicked Local Board members intent on re-election?
Of course the great weakness of the Auckland Plan was its lack of statutory weight under the RMA, which potentially makes it quite difficult to argue against the Unitary Plan’s zoning pattern on the basis that it doesn’t give effect to the Auckland Plan. But you would have thought the Councillors and Council staff who have touted the Auckland Plan as such an important document might have wanted to ensure the Unitary Plan at least had a small resemblance to the most critical part of the Auckland Plan – its development strategy.
In saying that someone remembered it just long enough to put this into the Unitary plan under Part 1, Chapter A, section 3.1
The Auckland Plan is at the top of the strategic framework. Mandated by s. 79 of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009, the Auckland Plan provides a basis for aligning the implementation plans, regulatory plans and funding programmes of the Auckland Council. The Auckland Plan describes the 30-year vision of Auckland as the world’s most liveable city and provides the strategic direction for other council plans and strategies.
The Unitary Plan is Auckland’s key resource management document prepared under the RMA, and is one of the most critical parts of the strategic framework. It plays a key role in the successful implementation of the Auckland Plan, by:
- spatially identifying opportunities and constraints for activities and development in Auckland
- identifying highly valued and regionally significant resources that the policies protect or manage
- establishing clear and consistent priorities for resource use and protection by identifying boundaries and limits based on environmental values
- establishing priorities for resource use where there are likely to be competing uses, such as competition for land between primary production and urban development
- setting rules for regulating land use, subdivision and development.
They even went to the extend of putting this chart in place to show where the Unitary Plan sits in relation to the other council plans and strategies.
On the bright side, now that we’ve seemingly thrown out the Auckland Plan’s development strategy, does that mean we can throw out its list of motorway projects too?
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Spending months on grand planning documents and then ignoring them is fairly common for Auckland I think. Must be dispiriting for the authors of these, after putting in so much time, thought and effort.
I think these ‘grand planning documents’ are pretty pointless. Microzoning every section of Auckland was always going to be at the whims of the pro-intensification/pro-sprawl (depending on who’s in charge).
I think everyone would be happier if we repealed the plan and all the associated rules (Minimum house size, urban limits etc.) and just had some general guidelines and just let the housing develop where it’s intended to be. If it ends up that we turn into Atlanta or Amsterdam than so be it though I imagine it’ll be somewhere in the middle like what Auckland is like now.
Yes that would be ideal. However the same people who decry the RUB as nanny state regulation would have a fit if you suggested doing away with the exclusionary zoning laws. So then we would definitely end up with Atlanta and there woul;d be no choice available to inetnsify even if that is what people want.
That may result in affordable housing but not affordable lifestyles as Aucklanders(mostly young people) are forced to buy homes far away from where they work and with no option but driving.
The Auckland Plan was so 2012. Auckland flip flops on its growth strategy so often it was clearly time to reinvent the wheel.
great post. Looks like the Unitary Plan has allowed for far too little development in the Central Isthmus area, especially along Mt Eden Rd. Not only is that contrary to the strategic direction that has been articulated in the Auckland Plan, but it’s also where people want to live and hence where property prices are currently inflated.
I would encourage people to submit in support of zoning that allowed for more intensive development in many central areas.
But you’re also right in that if development is not allowed to occur in a particular area then it should receive very little funding for improvements. That means cutting off all money for putting sand on the Eastern Beaches etc. Why can’t the local boards understand that relationship? No growth = no public investment.
“No growth = no public investment” – Yes I plan to do post on that issue entirely
In those areas that have opposed intensification Council needs to front up and say: “right we’re turning off the local government funding tap because your local board has opposed population growth in your area”.
I really don’t think the opponents of intensification fully understand how their actions will ultimately impact on local government investment priorities. In Ponsonby’s case, no growth = no Ponsonby Road upgrade. Or at least certainly not before Great North Rd, Te Atatu Rd, Lincoln Rd etc etc. The actions of these people have probably at least halved the level of Council investment that will occur in Auckland’s central suburbs. They may have even sufficiently undermined growth to a degree that affects central government investment, e.g. in new/expanded schools.
At which point people might turn around and say “oh but but but … we’re not allowing anyone else to live here but we want nice new things too”. To which I’d say “d’uh”.
Stu, you would say d’uh, but pretty much guaranteed that the rich and powerful in Ponsonby and Remmers and wherever else won’t have to take no for an answer. That’s not how local government politics works…
Quite simple really, if Len doesn’t listen to voters he will be ousted, in fact he has now won my vote by scaling down the plan. A moderate change plan on paper is actually a complete re-valuation of the entire city. The implications of such a move have not been thought through and are well above the head of anyone reading this blog. In fact, you lads used to say the Unitary plan would not alter house prices, look at what damage the plan has done so far. Now watch Auckland’s housing bubble peal away as a site allowed three sites is now allowed none. Wrap this up with new LVR limits and presto. In essence, the draft strategy at the top of this post had house prices only going one way, now with this new version hopefully it will cool it back down the otherway.
If anyone could provide evidence of any other country entirely re-zoning one of their cities, one that is ta HUB, I would love to hear about it.
So you’re saying that by only allowing 1 unit to be built on a site rather than the previously proposed 3 that house prices will now tumble? Are you serious?!?
Hamburg is a city that has undergone a recent rezoning and has strongly pushed and selected a compact city, one that will allow more people to live in the existing areas of the city thereby keeping the green space around the city that people enjoy. Furthermore, they’re quite clear with the intention that walking, cycling and PT will be the main focus on all future investments and things like car share systems provided for times when people do need a car. Compare that with Auckland where we force any and all new developments to build dozens of carparks. I wish Auckland could have intelligent discussions like Germany does, and I know where I’ll be living in 10 years in Auckland follows down Atlanta’s sprawl path as it now appears to be doing.
In many places the current UP plan allows for less development than the previous District Plans. Not sure how constraining development potential leads to lower house prices?
The general relationship is that more development = increased housing supply = lower house prices.
Feel free to suggest another theory, but you’ll need some seriously good evidence to back it up.
It is amazing how often the “allowing more development will make house prices higher” argument comes up. Yes – if the rules are changed so that a site can be subdivided – the totality of the parent site will be more expensive than it would have been if subdivision was not allowed, but the sites resulting from the subdivision will be much cheaper.
Consider this – an 18″ 8 slice pizza from Sals costs $24. An individual slice costs $5. So buying 8 individual slices will be more expensive ($40) than if you had bought a whole pizza. But that does not mean that a single slice is more expensive than a whole pizza – it is far cheaper. When it comes to housing in Auckland we are only allowed to buy a whole pizza – even if we only feel like eating one slice. And we wonder why everyone is so fat.
(come back next week for the next instalment of maths for NIMBYs)
maths for NIMBYs is a waste of time. They only care about things that aren’t based in logic.
I know, but I thought pizza might be something they can relate to.
Exactly. You should have told a story about a little old lady who was crushed by a pizza because the pizza had been rezoned by the UP to apartments. Or something. Then you might get reaction.
“In fact, you lads used to say the Unitary plan would not alter house prices, look at what damage the plan has done so far.”
How exactly? You do realise Josh that the plan in force currently is not the UP?
And right on cue here’s an article in today’s Herald:
“The locals dress up concerns with all sorts of things but the reality is they just don’t want change,” Chevin said.
At Mt Wellington, Tony Gapes has been waiting to hear if his Springpark can go ahead after limited notification that drew strong objections from neighbours on the grounds of noise, traffic, overcrowding, contamination, dust, grime, smells and calls to eliminate rats from the area.
***Neighbours at Mt Wellington and Albany say the developments are out of keeping with the areas’ stand-alone houses with gardens and space.***
Hmm … that sounds very much like: “Only people who want a lawn to mow and have BBQs should live in this area”. And giving into them will simply mean that Auckland’s urban area becomes ever more segregated into the haves and the have nots. I don’t think that’s a good thing.
P.s. Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11132476
I’m in two minds about that whether that Albany example is that ideal for significant development. That’s only because it is no where near any of the proposed frequent or secondary PT network and has one of those street patterns where you have to walk 500m to get 50m
I’m not sure a 65 unit 2-3 storey development qualifies as “significant” (at least in most cities overseas).
And if Auckland requires circa 20,000 new dwellings per year just to keep up with population growth then in that context 65 units is quite a small drop in the bucket.
Depending on which one they are talking about the location is pretty good, or pretty average.
One of the set of flats is closer than I used to park when I used park and ride. The other is in Albany village, miles from the PT networks we talk about, but at least in a town centre.
Everyone who opposes upzoning in their area is a sprawl proponent. That is the only alternative.
And it is no good just choosing to believe there isn’t any growth pressure as some of our councillors apparently do.
Stu, 61 mead st in avondale sold the otherday for $550k. The zoning under the march draft allowed for two sites. Now that draft zoning has changed back to single housing, are you saying that 61 mead st would still sell for $550k?
Now lets say you can subdivide 61 mead into two sites. The owner would need to clear $275k per property to break even. But hold on the house that’s there is in the wrong place, it needs moving, new piles, more consents, more planning. In fact, a fair estimate would say add another $50k for this. That takes us to a $300k breakeven, but wait, there is still no house on one site?? – Add another $250k for a new terrace house and you’ve managed to end up with one site (exisiting dwelling) breaking even at $300k and the other break even at $550k… And stu, thats just breakeven! What about a bit of profit for the owner who wants at least $100k after tax. Add an extra $70k profit onto both sites.. Wake up mate!!
@JoshR – please see my comment above for a fun maths lesson
So JoshR, basically you’re more worried about profits than about how on earth people will be able to afford to live in Auckland. Typical.
Nothing wrong with wanting to make a profit – but wanting to make a profit while being unable to do basic arithmetic is a problem.
JoshR you’re completely confusing price per dwelling with the total value of a property.
In your example, the price of the dwelling initially equals the value of the property, i.e. $550k. You’re correct to say that after upzoning the price of the property would increase – because now you could locate two houses on that one property. Let’s say post upzoning the property value increases to $750k.
Now let’s say that an additional dwelling was built on the site and the value of the property increases further to $1 million to reflect these capital improvements. Is this a continued deterioration in housing affordability as you would claim? No, because the price per dwelling is now $1 million / 2 = $500k per dwelling, i.e. $50k less than the original dwelling on its own.
So upzoning has increased the total value of the property, while at the same time improving housing affordability. This comes about because the proportional increase in housing is larger than the proportional increase in value.
Finally, your argument also tends to ignore the fact that the more upzoning that is allowed across Auckland, then the less the price uplift associated with upzoning will be. Stated differently, the more places that can be developed, the less of a premium will be attached to upzoning. That’s simple economics.
@orangekiwi – No im more worried about kiwi’s having negative equity in their homes. Are you?
worry less; think more.
+1
@Stu – I wil say you have put it better than I did. I personally can’t see how a $500k site on 300sqm is more affordable than a $550K site on 600sqm. In terms of affordablility you save $50k but in general terms you’ve lost 300sqm.. This example is real life, it is happening as we speak. Affordable housing will only hold true when re-zoning allows 5 storeys, allowing 61 mead st 6 properties all at $400k each. However, bye bye lawn and garden..
Anyways, I called this well before the March draft and I was called an idiot for suggesting UP would increase house prices. Well here’s my next call, affordable housing will only be done in greenfield areas unless height limits are smashed to bits.
@Every kiwi who wants affordable homes – Welcome to “redhills”!!!
JoshR, your preferences are your preferences – I have absolutely nothing to say about them.
But by the same token there are many people out there (such as myself) who would be prepared to forgo 300sqm in land if it meant that I could save $50k (or more) on a house. That’s why I own an apartment in the central city, which is 50 sqm and cost me $250k. The money I save on my housing and transport costs means that I can live a very comfortable happy life.
So the moral of the story is: As much as possible, let people decide for themselves what trade-offs they are willing to make.
P.s. Yes we should smash the height limits. People who are in the affordable housing market are typically budget constrained, i.e. they simply cannot afford to spend more on housing. So I think you’re correct to note that they will force affordable housing to the urban periphery, where land is cheaper.
I think there is still some scope here for good intensification, although really only in the Mixed Urban zone and above. I don’t think height limits are an issue (three stories is plenty for either terraced houses, townhouses or walk-up apartments) so much as the minimum land area per dwelling. To make it worthwhile you’d generally need to turn one house into three dwellings, or two into four or more. So you really need a 1000m2 site in the Mixed Urban before you’d contemplate redevelopment (at 250m2 each), or 1200m2 elsewhere (at 300m2 each). That’s pretty big, even so called quarter acre blocks generally aren’t that large.
Over in Melbourne and Sydney the classic terrace house lots are a quater chain wide (5m) and one chain long (20m), or only 100m2. They typically get a two story dwelling with a porch at the front and a rear yard, usually with parking at the back of a lane. Now that might be a little extreme for some people, but do we need our minimum size lot for an urban house lot to be two and a half times what is typical over there?
At 250m2 you are allowed 50% building coverage and three stories, in other words houses of 375m2 floor area. That is huge, about twice the size of what you’d want out of a terrace and full nine times the minimum dwelling size.
It seems many developers disagree that the lower densities in the UP as notified will help with housing problems or housing prices: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11132477
Patrick is a client of mine and far from a touchy feely liberal. He is all about profit and the market. Yet he is opposed to a city “blighted by urban sprawl”.
I find your arguments and concerns very confused. On the one hand you seem to be saying that intensification would lower house prices (normally the opposite argument is adopted by pro-sprawl advocates) while at the same time saying that prices will remain almost unchanged (albeit for a smaller property).
You do realise there are only two ways to grow a city – up or out? Portland/Vancouver or Houston/Atlanta. You can adjust the mix but that is it. Or of course somehow articfically strangle the growth out of the most successful city in NZ with pro-rural policies.
It’s more affordable because it costs 50k less. Not everybody wants a lawn and garden. Your argument seems to rely on the initial assumption that bigger = better which is certainly not true.
50k less AND its a brand new house rather than the old shack that was there originally.
I am utterly lost with the assumptions here, 300sqm is more affordable than 600sqm because it’s $50k cheaper.. I think anyone with a 1/2 a brain would be rolling down the hill in laughter. My point is, why not purchase the place for $550k and andevelop it yourself d keep one of the houses while profiting of the other. Any normal person would agree with me.. $550k is affordable. The UP has pushed 61 mead from $400k to $550k, in 2 years..
Well Josh, I want a 200m section maximum with one carpark. Until the specifications of the property are lower than that I am not losing any value, so I have saved 50k on the property and will continue to save in maintainance costs from the smaller section. Sounds like good value to me. Plus having 2 dwellings on the site means that there are more people in the area, making it more urban and increasing local amenity, which also adds value to me.
What on earth are you talking about? The UP hasn’t even come into effect.
JoshR – I understand your point but the issue is affordability – not the amount paid per sqm. Cant you see that those are not the same thing?
At the end of the day, if I cant afford $550k then I cant, regardless of how much land is with it. If I can afford $500k then I have just bought a brand new house in Avondale – a great result for most first home buyers. I live in a house on 300sqm now and frankly I could do without about 100sqm as I have no interest in lawns or gardening.
It is all about choice, choice and more choice. Oh and change – pretty scary to a lot of people.
You ask what happened to the Auckland Plan, it is still there but people have realised that it only has the status of “management plans and strategies prepared under other Acts” RMA 74(2)b(i). The UP has to have regard to it but isn’t required to give effect to it. It is wishful thinking to consider it a plan to rule all other plans. Particularly so given the light weight analysis and consultation the Council carried out for it. In my view they were selling a bill of goods rather than trying to get any consensus around it. The UP will get a full statutory workout and be subject to evidence based challenges rather than the Councillors just asking for comments and then giving us 4 minutes to speak. As Wolfie Smith said “Power to the People!”
Now why does that statement above sound like No More Rates David Thorton’s spiel I would find on Facebook?
As for the constant harping on about “evidence” I hear from Thorton and Dick Quax I did ask the question of: Are you a leader or manager…
Huh? Are you suggesting leaders don’t need to worry about evidence? or managers?? My simple point is don’t give the Auckland Plan more status than it deserves. It was cobbled from the same old ARC type ideology, packaged in coloured diagrams (mine even arrived with a ribbon around it like some sort of present!) And then on the day I submitted as each speaker talked about the impact of a housing shortage we were simply ignored by politicians who didn’t care or didn’t want to hear what impact their favourite policies are having. Then add insult to injury the Council told us at the pre-UP meetings that intensification was a done deal because the Council had produced an Auckland Plan and it was supported by the submissions. Three people at the meeting I attended stood up and said they had submitted against intensification but now we are being given as proof of public acceptance.
Josh,
A house on a 300 sqm section that costs 500K is more affordable than a house on a 600sqm section that costs 550K. It’s more affordable by 50K, isn’t it?
I suspect that JoshR’s comment at 9.01 about Len backpedalling furiously in order to attract more votes is a fair assumption, although I don’t know why he’s bothering as he’s a shoe-in. Perhaps he’s afraid that the looney left and green candidates will split his vote, but I can’t see Palino attracting enough votes to come anywhere near winning – insufficient name recognition for a start.
It does seem disappointing to restrict the opportunity to intensify, regardless of one’s view of that vs expansion of the city limits. If both options were available then the market would sort things out – with neither, ever-higher house prices is inevitable until rising interest rates hit and a bunch of people get hurt.
As for the JoshR/Stu D debate, they’re coming from different angles: $/sqm total vs $/sqm of dwelling only. I’m more with Stu on that one – not everyone wants a lot of land. The weakness in Stu’s argument is that his apartment cost $5000/sqm, whereas my standalone townhouse cost about $4000/sqm including land value (+/-5% depending on whether you include balconies or not). Economy of scale might be a factor of course.
How is that a weakness in the argument – that two different properties have different values / sqm? There are many variables that can affect that, the most obvious one being location.
But Stu’s original point – that if you make more efficient use of land the resulting dwellings will be more affordable than if you don’t – still stands.
(Sigh) Because it means that the per unit floor area cost of an apartment is more than that of a house, all other things being equal, despite the reduced footprint – but you knew that, didn’t you? I know I shouldn’t take the bait, but I was actually agreeing with Stu that it’s a matter of personal choice. The market will respond to whatever is in demand, provided it’s not skewed by planning restrictions, so I agree with the thrust of the post that the revised version of the UP is a backward step. My preference would be minimal planning control, although I accept that the NIMBYs might have heart failure if that happened – or maybe not, because sensible developers would have regard to their market.
As for variables such as location, in the Stu/jonno1 comparison if Stu is in Grafton (as I think he has previously said) then I’m not too far from him, but not quite as central. OTOH, my house may be built to a higher quality standard (no disrespect intended – Stu’s apartment may well be ultra-luxurious in which case I stand corrected). So if the locations and quality are reasonably similar or balance out, the comparison still stands.
Back to possible reasons for the changes to the UP (other than vote catching). My spies tell me that the infrastructure group at Council is ramping up big-time as they have finally woken up to the fact that existing infrastructure in the central area couldn’t cope with a massive increase in load. This is not only waste- and storm-water load, but water supply to multi-storey buildings for fire control (may be OK for normal use).
I wasn’t baiting – you just didn’t make it clear that you were talking about construction cost, but that is a fair point.
Is it because we have such a dis-economy of scale that construction of multi-unit developments is so much more expensive /sqm than standalone housing?
Sorry about the misunderstanding Frank, I guess that’s a risk of trying to encapsulate thoughts briefly.
I agree that the construction cost of apartments is a bit of a mystery. The problem may be that you need to get to 10 storeys or so before economies of scale kick in, by which point additional costs like lifts, fire systems and building WoFs etc have taken over. Whatever the reason, it seems to swamp the reduction in land value per dwelling, or perhaps that value just keeps rising to match the occupancy level. There may be a structural engineer or two reading this who can enlighten us.
I actually meant economy of scale in the industry, as so few apartments get built here.
I’m not a developer but i’ve heard that it is possible to build multi unit developments of three storeys or less for a much more competetive price as lifts and heavy construction techniques are not needed. Anyone with knowledge on this?
But again it is density restrictions that are the real problem.
Yes up to about three stories works well because you don’t need to have lifts, fire control systems and heavy structures, so for townhouses, terraced houses or low rise walk up apartments/flats that’s all good. Land utilisation is relatively low and land cost per unit relatively high, but the low construction costs make it economic.
Above about seven stories you do naturally need the lifts and high rise construction methods so the construction cost goes up, but that is offset by the high number of units you can build on a site. Land utilisation is high and the cost of development per unit low, so that is also economic.
The place where it tends not to work is the middle ground, four to six stories. There you have all the construction costs of high rise but land utilisation and number of units comparable to low rise, the worst of both worlds swamping the profitablity as Jonno suggests. It can still work depending on the site and specifics of course, particularly where the land is a bit cheaper and each of your floors can be quite big laterally.
I’m quite happy with the Mixed Housing Urban zone (apart from it’s extent) because it allows those three story typologies to be built relatively easily. Not sure on the Terraced House and Apartment zone though, it has a limit of four stories in some places and six in others. I reckon four stories is too low to see much apartment development, we’ll probably see most of that done with three story terraces instead. The places with six story limits will probably see them all done to exactly six stories, or not done at all.
The problem with the mixed housing urban zone is the maximum density rule for sites smaller than 1200 m2. With a maximum density of 250 – 300 m2 it won’t even be possible to build a more compact type of stand alone house – let alone anything more intense.
That is interesting about the lack of viability of 4 – 5 storeys. That makes the downgrading of town centres such as Orewa and Browns Bay from 6 to 4 storeys even more stupid.
Sorry, completely missed this debate about my apartment. FYI I rent in Grafton, but I own in the city centre (Brooklyn Building on Emily Place to be precise). The Brooklyn is a heritage apartment building (1920s). I’d suggest the price differential is primarily due to its centrality and charm.
@Frank – Efficient use of land by allowing two sites from one is a joke Frank. That point doesn’t stand up at all. I have already noted 5 storeys would be efficient use, not 1 into 2. And again, you have expressed little concern towards the costs involved in removing the exisiting dwelling to fit two sites.
I have provided a real life example about the investment theory behind the person who purchased this property in Avondale. Believe you me the intend to profit otherwise no sale. i.e. no profit means affordability out the window. There never has and never will be a free hand out..
Stu has already explained this above:
http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2013/10/01/what-happened-to-the-auckland-plan/#comment-84675
I used to work for developers who did exactly this and the cost of removing a house is pretty negligible. This is often because the company removing it can either resell the house or make quite a bit out of recycling the materials. The recycling market is dead now in Chch following the recent disasters but I imagine that doesnt apply in Auckland.
Also people probably overestimate the value of the existing building on a site as distinct from the land value. Regarding that large property in Avondale that sold for $550 k, the old house on the site was probably only worth about $60 k if you exclude the land value. These properties are expensive because the land is valuable, not because old shacks are valuable. All the more reason that land should be used efficiently.
Exactly. It is interesting explaining to my relatives from the South Island that the house is completely irrelevant to price on much of the Isthmus. And watching their jaw drop when you tell them how much that small, poorly built shack (that would be used to house animals in Europe) in Ellerslie is worth.
Once again, the whole issue illustrates the hypocrisy of the Auckland quarter-acre cartel who are happy to see the back of the RMA, and who are equally happy to invoke it when their locality just happens to be earmarked for Vancouverisation.
Little wonder the NZ housing market is stagflating.
Interesting article on Houston and its move away from unlimited sprawl:
http://www.governing.com/topics/urban/gov-houston-urban-revival.html
Looks like Auckland is becoming more conservative on density than the poster child of sprawl. How depressing.