There have been many issues in the debate how Auckland should develop and a lot of it comes down to preferences and in particular housing preferences. On the one side of the debate there are those – who are often baby boomer generation or older – who claim that no-one wants to live in an apartment and that we all want big standalone houses. They extrapolate that to mean we should focus on building a lot more standalone houses on the urban fringe.
We (and others) have long said that a range of dwelling types are needed in many locations to give people choice in where and they live. That allows people to make trade-offs based on their location/amenity preferences and how much they’re prepared to pay. That means even you would prefer a large house, if living closer to the city is important to you then you may be prepared to live in a terraced house or apartment rather than have a large house on the outskirts of town. Of course many also prefer higher density living.
Previous research in to the issue of preferences was often simplistic not taking into account the real world constraints and trade-offs people make. As reported by the herald yesterday, new research for the council finally addresses that missing part and has some interesting findings. The report is here (4mb).
Perhaps its key finding is that while there is a majority of people who would prefer a standalone house, the current housing stock more than satisfies that demand that outside the city centre there is a shortfall of units and apartments.
The research divided Auckland up in to eight general sectors “according to land value and spatial location” as shown below. This was used to help in identifying where people currently live and where they would be prepared to live based on various factors.
Respondents were asked to identify the relative importance of 58 features grouped across five categories without considering any constraints. The five categories are:
- Convenience and access (14 features)
- Proximity to facilities (9 features)
- Local environment (9 features)
- Property features (13 features)
- Dwelling features (13 features)
Each feature was ranked as either ‘very important’, ‘of some importance’ or ‘not at all important’ and then they had to pick the top five of the ones they ranked very important. That resulted in this outcome for the five categories
The top 15 individual features are shown below. As you can see a safe neighbourhood is by far and away the most important thing while a standalone dwelling is just over half as important. I was a little surprised that none of the amenity (proximity to facilities) featured in the top 15.
Below are how the respondents rated features in each of the categories – remember these rankings are without any constraints.
The second stage of the survey looked at what happens when a financial constraint is added in. Key findings from this were:
- Almost half of the respondents (47%), when faced with a set of housing options that they could afford, chose a final housing option that was within the location that they had initially preferred. The match between initial preference and final choice is strongest for Sector 2 (Auckland Isthmus), Sector 3 (North Shore Coastal) and Sector 7 (East Auckland).
- There was a difference in final location choice according to whether people were buying or renting. Buyers selected final housing options across all eight sectors while 75% of renters made a final choice in three sectors: North Shore Coastal, South Auckland and Auckland Isthmus.
- The choice of housing types strongly favoured medium (61%) and large (26%) sized dwellings as defined by bedroom number, with renters showing more acceptance of medium sized dwellings.
- Detached dwellings were the final choice of just over half (52%) of all respondents. This preference was similar for both buyers (54%) and renters (50%). Interestingly, the choice experiment shows that there is also a strong preference for other typologies, with 25% of respondents picking an attached dwelling (joined unit), 15% selecting low rise apartments and 8% selecting high rise apartments.
- Just over half (51%) stated that their final housing option reflected the actual housing choice they would make, if they ‘planned to move tomorrow’, while almost one in five (19%) selected ‘don’t know’. A smaller but nonetheless significant proportion indicated that the final option did not meet their housing preferences (30%).
- In general, following the choice exercise, respondents reported that dwelling value and house type were of more importance in their decision-making process than was location or dwelling features.
The table below shows the results of the once costs were considered. The numbers in green show the 9% who would move to a more expensive area after considering the implications. The blue is the 47% would stay in the same area they were in and the red represents the 40% who would shift to lower priced typologies if they were available. As you can see the isthmus is the preferred option followed by the coastal North Shore and East Auckland i.e. coastal areas.
The report highlights that there is clearly a mismatch between what housing stock exists, what is being currently being consented and what people would choose if it were available. They say the idea of high density in the city centre and low density elsewhere doesn’t match the preferences shown in the study highlighting that we need more dwelling options in a lot more places. The question is whether our future planning laws will allow for that.
In particular what we need is the missing middle
Image source: Missing Middle Housing, Opticos Design, Inc.
Of course those boomers who think no one wants an apartment and that everyone wants a stand alone house refuse to believe it and continue to spout that it’s the council’s fault for not allowing unlimited sprawl.
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As you say, just what many of us have been saying anyway. Without the need for reports. Density is not just about the CBD.
The “multiplex”, “live/work” and “mid-rise” are the types of buildings that should not be restricted within 500m of a train station or other RTN station (with very few exceptions like shading on public space)
That ‘office park’ regulation of Smales Farm is an abomination.
There is another option for the missing middle housing that is starting to appear elsewhere and that is the micro community or tiny house villages. The biggest barrier to any of the options though are the current planning regulations and the NIMBY attitude of some property owners or councillors.
Even where density is allowed, this tends to be problematic. The Unitary Plan in particular only really allows mid-density using monolithic unit title developments in one huge whack, with a whole bunch of cookie cutter terraced houses or something. You can’t just subdivide and have a small house on a small lot. I don’t want a huge house, but I’d really rather avoid having to have a Body Corporate. In Auckland, that means you’re SOL unless you’ve got the scratch to buy an old house in Ponsonby.
Even America has a better framework than us for this sort of thing, in the form of often-misnamed “trailer parks”. If you want a small, but permanent, house on a small site, there’s land specially zoned for that sort of use: http://oldurbanist.blogspot.co.nz/2014/05/mobile-home-impediments-and.html. I’ve stayed with family in a very nice so-called “trailer park” in Tucson, AZ, and it’s a format with a lot going for it: pleasant narrow streets, efficient (and thus cheap) use of land, the benefits of density, but preserving a bit of privacy and allowing a lot of light, and allowing you to built and renovate independent of your neighbours.
Great work by the research team – this really is an important study!
A couple things stood out for me. First, the large number of people who dropped out of the survey due to the fact they don’t have enough income / assets to afford _anything_. 23% of the sample fell into this category. The researchers didn’t ask further questions about what they want, but it’s safe to assume that they’re at the pointy end of trade-offs about size, quality, and cost. Responding to their needs will require us to think hard about how and where we’re going to make small dwellings available.
The second key observation was that among the people who did have enough money, there was a general preference for medium or large dwellings. This doesn’t necessarily mean big houses on large lots – it can mean a spacious apartment in the right place. “Spacious” is the key word – in economic terms, private living space is a good that we consume more of when our incomes rise. So we also need to think about how we can get more of that in a growing city where land is expensive.
A problem my family has experienced is its harder to get finance & insurance for apartments or dwellings connected especially since the leaky building fiasco. We were told banks & insurance companies want to avoid long drawn out fights in court to find out who is liable. So it doesn’t matter how many surveys are done its the banks & insurance companies who dictate what type of housing we live in
This bit interested me-
“Our research suggests that, outside of the Auckland central area, there is a significant under-supply of units and apartments, while the supply of apartments in the Auckland central area exceeds demand.”
That’s probably true based on all the oldies keen on quitting the family house and moving to something smaller without having to leave their current neighbourhood.
But what are they trying to imply with the “central area”, (CBD + Freemans Bay + Grafton + Parnell) supply exceeding demand?
I think they mean that supply in this area is larger than the expressed average for the whole city-wide study. This doesn’t mean that there is an oversupply of apartments in inner areas in market terms; there isn’t. And we know there isn’t because the prices of apartments in this area are not falling. Anecdotally there is a lack of certain kinds of apartments and other ‘multi-family’, as the Americans call them, typologies. Which is to say 3, or even 4 bedders.
It’s also possible that there’s an oversupply of apartments in the central city compared to people’s first preferences for location. Since there’s not many apartments elsewhere in the centre of the region, people choose the CBD because that’s the only place available. If you could build apartments anywhere on the isthmus, it’s quite possible not that many more would be built in the CBD, compared to other isthmus locations.
Looks like one source of land for the city could be the urban golf courses, given the tiny 2% that rank proximity as very important. Or at least open these up to better mixed recreational uses
Yes I thought that too. Cars and golf are joined at the hip: Middle aged men at play. Why else would BMW spend so much money on it? Having said that just yesterday I was amused to see a guy heading into the Panmure train station with a set of clubs over his shoulder… where was he off to?
Also note most aren’t interested in swimming pools.
Interesting also that proximity to PT rates more highly than proximity to destinations themselves. I love good PT access, but even better is to not have to move further than walking or cycling range for everything, which is what we have in Grey Lynn, better local amenity than PT service. One reason we can Quax so well; it’s all just there. But no well connected PT hub, no RTN, just a 20min freq bus, got to get to P Rd for even a 10 min bus in traffic. K Rd Station will be a big improvement for the inner west, even though it’ll require a ride for people at my current distance. But it is getting surrounded by new apartments.
It seems odd how much urban land is tied up in golf courses, which are a very space-hungry land use. Given that people spend hours at a course and drive there anyway, I’d think private clubs would be better off with cheap rural land, flogging off their land to developers. Meanwhile, public courses would be better used for more popular sports, which also can serve more people with the same space. Carrington is a particularly good example: it’s a massive amount of space for a tiny sport, in an area crying out for more rectangular-field sports grounds.
Yes amazing that a cycling lane will take 1.5m metres of a road and it is a national disaster because only 2% cycle – even with all the benefits that cme with someone choosing to travel by bike rather than car.
But dedicate hectares of public land to a sport played by a tiny minority with no intrinsic benefits – in fact it generates many car trips – and that is fine.
Sheer hypocrisy.
I find some of these surveys a bit of a waste of time. If given the choice between a Ferrari or a Toyota most are going to pick a Ferrari. That doesn’t mean we shut the Toyota factory and only make Ferraris – with all the cost involved in that. Ranking whats important or desirable doesn’t take into account what people can afford right here and now, information gap, and the choices of other people. And of course as it has been pointed out the real issue is about choice – right now we don’t have enough dense housing for those that actually want to live like that. And the NIMBYS and the nowhere-anywhere brigade don’t appreciate that others may desire something else even if a large number like the same as them.
That’s the point – this study did look at what people could afford within their budget constraints. So it first asked them where they’d like to live, and in what kind of home, if money was no issue (preference: detached home, in the isthmus or coastal areas), and then asked them what they would actually choose if constrained financially (preferences become much more varied, with compromises required on home type or location).
Your last two sentences say it all ” …highlighting that we need more dwelling options in a lot more places. The question is whether our future planning laws will allow for that.”
Which comes back to the central point that the problem is the planning regulations. Without them, we wouldn’t even need the study, we could let people decide for themselves whether “.. the current housing stock more than satisfies that demand [for standalone houses] outside the city centre”
Thanks Matt, very interesting.
As someone who supports the thrust of your blog I do find your repeated derogatory references to “boomers” to be tiresome and somewhat of a turn off.
You cannot lump a whole cohort of people together like that. It is discriminatory, ageist and just plain wrong. There are a group of people who are the “enemy” but they are not all part of one single generation. As a device of divide and rule the inter-generational thing is a useful distraction and those who buy into it would best be thought of as useful idiots (if I may quote Lenin).
It’s the old “look there” technique whilst they are busy picking your Pocket.
I really do expect better.
It does state “who are often” and that is the reality. There are also quite a few enlightened boomers who are living in, or moving to, higher density, walkable areas. But the noise mostly comes from that age group. Like it or not.
Must admit I agree with you Harry and find it strange that anyone with an opposing opinion/generation/income, etc is labelled derogatorily on this blog.
However moving along and keeping to the subject the simple thing is to build a variety of housing types (apartments, houses, flats, etc) and see what sells. The proof is in the pudding. Banks have a bit of an anti against apartments which makes it harder (they want bigger % deposits – currently 20% which may drop to 15%). Looking for a place for my stepson to buy I can offer anecdotal evidence over the 4 months we have been looking that houses seem to fly out the window whereas apartments tend to stay on Trademe much longer for what that’s worth. There is also a stigma and fear around leasehold anything (houses / apartments) as leases can rise quickly when they come up for renewal (worst examples being One Tree Hill where people have walked away as they cannot pay the 70 to 100k per annum) and body corp rates similarly which can seemingly change radically at the drop of a hat and then make a purchase proposition uneconomic. Regardless of housing style people need to be able to afford what they choose and have faith that costs won’t go through the roof 12 months later. So any way of managing leases and body corps better to install faith will see more of those types of property sell.
“the simple thing is to build a variety of housing types (apartments, houses, flats, etc) and see what sells.”
Yes precisely, and the few apartments and flats built outside the city centre sell like hotcakes (as do the one in the city centre) so there is some indication there. Main problem however is we make it illegal to build anything but stand alone houses across almost all of Aucklands area. The test will be revealed with the unitary plan making small scale terraces and low rise blocks much easier in the suburbs outside the CBD. My prediction is people will snap them super quick, and indeed I plan to start building them the second the plan is operative.
Funny, Boomers don ‘t seem to have any problem making disparaging comments about “young people”.
But then we aren’t the wealthiest, luckiest generation the world has even known , so I guess we need to mind our Ps and Qs when talking about our betters.
Of interest to me in that original report by m.e. spatial “The Housing we’d choose”, is that all the apartment design pictures are from developments in Wellington – the single houses are presumably from Auckland. Does that mean that there are no apartments worthy of consideration in Auckland, or have they deliberately put in out-of-town pics so that you aren’t influenced by inherent knowledge of the market? “All images supplied by Auckland Council” it says. Seems just very slightly weird to me…
As you can see from this graph from my favourite blog: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2013/10/23/more-details-on-aucklands-population-growth/. What we need is a flatter curve with more people on the 4-6000 ppl/sqkm kind of dwelling (multiplex would be my ideal place).
[this blog always gets it before everybody else]
Yip. This tells us that people want mixed density town centres/suburbs that have easily accessed shops and amenities (walkable/bikeable towns are the best) and with good connectivity to both roads and public transport. There is the mandate. Those opposing the UP need to get out of the way. They can have their stand alone houses. No one is proposing making them illegal. But Auckland needs, and more importantly, appears to want, medium density living. Lets just get on and do it.
Bryce ‘who’ is going to get on and do it? Any construction / building company will only want to build something they can make a decent profit out of. Telling them to ‘get on with it’ doesn’t really help. If there is no money in a particular housing style (as voted for by buyers queuing up to buy) then it won’t get built. All manner of investment outfits in conjunction with builders are no doubt studying this question daily as that is what makes them the dosh.
They’re already building medium density where it is easy. There are plenty going up in big subdivisions where developers are able to get changes through. The main issue is existing town plans and the objectors to the UP who may have successfully down zoned many areas.
I agree with harrymc , re stereotyping boomers . It really distracts from the debate.
I agree with others posting that planning regulations are the problem.
Planning can never keep up with the changes happening in society and there needs to be a complete rethink about how to regulate our cities. The current system is slow cumbersome and way to complex as planners scurry to find new rules that are out of date before the ink is dry. We tried recently to build 10 dwellings that included 4 x four bedroom attached townhouses; 1 x three bedroom standalone; 4x two bedroom attached two storey houses and a 1 bedroom apartment in a suburban street which got full support from the neighbours because it respected their needs. We were over subscribed with people wanting to live there and we could find no-one who didnt like it. However when it came to the town planners they were split in their support. The more experienced and more visionary planners could see where we were going but the rule book planners and especially the urban designer was obsessed with irrelevant issues based on his own personal prejudices.
The client eventually gave up hitting his head on a brick wall and downsized the project. The big loser was the people wanting to live in a dwelling that exactly suited their needs. Planners and urban designers are out of touch with what people really want.
The reason boomers get a mention is down to negative submissions to the unitary plan. Go and look at the Character Coalition. These people hate the thought of higher density and railed against it. They’re all of that generation. I also know a bunch of boomers who are embracing higher density and I don’t believe they’re the minority but usually those who fear something are more likely to submit.
It is fully legitimate to discuss generational experiences and especially decisions made that affect whole age groups. Whether directly by legislation, like subsidised travel, or education or whatever, or indirectly by favouring what one age group tends to own or where they live. And Boomer is just the name of an age bracket (and by some calculations the one I’m in) no need for anyone to take it personally. See the article below for how direct it can get:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/11/uk-young-fairness-george-osborne-budget
So any differing opinion (which is what submissions for AND against a proposal are all about) are to be labelled and treated with disdain? We live in a democracy, get used to it. No-one’s opinion is any more important than anyone else’s.
http://youtu.be/uDYba0m6ztE
‘Boomers’ is a tag for an age group. It is no more discriminatory than ‘Gen X’ (of which I fall into).
I get the impression that many of those replying believe that if we filled Auckland with apartments (any type) then the housing problems would magically disappear. However, if they read the results of the survey again they would see that what is needed is quality apartments with well thought out designs, north facing for natural light. Natural light was a clear winner in its category, while north facing comes near the top of its category. A while ago I had a major health issue which had my wife and I investigating apartments. We wanted to stay in the St Lukes-Kingsland area, (handy to public transport and food outlets) but those south-facing apartments along New North Road in Kingsland put us right off the idea. By the way, I’m a Boomer and proud of it.
They’re not all south facing in those complexes. My sister and brother in law lived in one near the corner of New North Road and Bond Street that was on the back of the complex facing the Sky Tower. Theirs was good and sunny.
I live in a development full of boomers. Yes, many developers have a long way to go to understand how to build correct types, while allowing light etc. I tend to think narrower buildings where the dwelling stretches right through the building are the best and that is what we bought. Light/ sun is impirtant to me.
You make a really a good point. I guess I’d generalise it further and say that Aucklanders would like to have something different to what they’re currently being offered in the housing market. Most of us can’t afford to buy 600m2 of land to go with our house, but we’re a bit wary of the quality of the alternatives on offer. (Unfairly, in many cases!)
So how do we get something different? In my view, we must be willing to tolerate innovation in housing development. This means making it relatively easy for people to come along and try building new things, whether it’s terraced houses, midrise character flats (a la Ockham’s 3-storey developments) or small apartment blocks in the suburbs.
In order to get the benefits of this process, we have to accept that new ideas don’t always work out the first time. If we insist that everything has to be great the first time, it’ll probably stifle the process of change.
Lastly, it’s also worth noting that there can be positive unintended consequences when developing apartments. Let’s say that I’m developing a block of apartments on a big site. Half of the apartments are on the north side and half are on the south side. The north-facing ones will probably command higher prices and sell to higher-income people who value that amenity more. The south-facing ones might sell for less, to younger people or people with a bit less money who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to buy into the area. The result is a more diverse, equitable community – all in the same building.
It’s also about where those apartments are developed. For instance the development on Union Street. Their website has all the usual information about the development, and it all looks sensible. A mix of apartment sizes, gardens…
There’s just that one thing they’re not bragging about. The location. Cook Street, one of the last places where I would want to live in an apartment. All the downsides (mainly traffic noise) and none of the upsides (anything nearby) of city living.
Talking about being wary, it’s widely been reported you should be careful with those so-called Mediterranean style buildings from the late 90’s and 2000’s. The ones with the cladding and no eaves. As it happens, that’s how most town houses on the lower North Shore were built. In this case being wary is not so much about a type of housing, but more about what period those houses were built.
You can’t say no one wants an apartment. Figure 3.4 shows 3% do want an attached dwelling of some sort. Presumably some of that 3% want an apartment…
Wouldn’t it make sense for the Government to make overseas buyers build new houses/apartments if they want to invest in NZ housing?
That rule doesn’t seem to have made much difference in Australia, as you can see from Stu Donovan’s latest post.
I support intensified living.
We need to start seizing underutilised properties along the Gt North Rd ridge under the Public Works Act and building state-funded apartment towers.
Simultaneously, however, we need to tighten up noise pollution rules while relaxing pet ownership rules.
I think it’s funny that we have such a high preference for standalone dwellings, but at a regulatory level we make it so hard to build enough of them in a dense, affordable way.
Many of our roads are so large that we could build houses in the space devoted to cars. We’ve got residential streets wide enough to accommodate one lane of traffic each way, plus on street parking on both sides. There is little point in residential streets have dedicated lanes for traffic – these are living spaces, not traffic throughput spaces. We should move to the Japanese model of building suburbs: significantly narrower streets (say 10 – 15 feet) which effectively operate as shared spaces (no use separation).
Oh, if only… People understanding that—note to PR people—intensification is less harmful than radioactive radiation (but it rhymes), and that—another note to PR people—it doesn’t automatically mean 14-storey apartment towers. The newspapers were rife with people having visions of entire Ponsonby or Grey Lynn being bulldozed to make room for those towers. And I’ll never forget those flyers warning us for all that ugly 2 and 3-storey high-rise. And now we have this odd feature in the UP, that the closer to the CBD you get, the lower the density gets, dropping to this pale yellow by the time you reach Ponsonby or Devonport.
That we have a “missing middle” is quite painfully obvious when you’re looking for a house. I’m more curious as to why it’s missing.
Terraced housing, a popular choice in medium density areas in Europe, is virtually non-existent. You still get the freehold title and the garden (OK, small garden), but it uses less land than free-standing houses. Often those sections are less than 10 meter wide. You can build up to 1 dwelling per 200m² this way. Are banks still afraid to offer mortgages for those? Or is it just not allowed?
And what’s happening in eg. the Birkdale area? We are getting small clusters of townhouses dotted randomly around the area. Rather than, say, closer to the Highbury centre, where there’s better access to PT. It’s not like there’s plenty of room for more cars on Onewa Road. What forces are in play there?
There is actually a health reason for not living in a south side apartment – no UV for clothes drying. That’s right, studies in the USA, where apartment living is a lot more common than NZ, have shown that a failure to hang washing, especially underwear and socks etc, in the UV sunlight can bring on serious health problems. It appears that the pathogens that cause skin lesions and ulcers just love the warmth of a clothes dryer and multiply to plague proportions under such conditions, whereas the UV in the sunlight knocks them stone cold dead. I looked into this when my mother died a long and agonising death from leg ulcers after she went into a retirement home, something she had no problems with when living at home where she could hang out the washing. I spoke to a friend who was a district nurse serving retirement villages in Auckland and she said she had noticed the same thing.
I don’t understand whence or why the gratuitous slap at “boomers” in the last sentence of the post. The back to the city movement has been facilitated by boomers working in the planning and design sectors which have grown exponentially in the past 40 years. We’ve done the downtown redevelopment, waterfront reuse, commercial district revitalization, industrial conversion, nieghbourhood revitalisation, community participation, new urbanism, affordable housing, equity and environmental justice, form-based codes, alternative transportation planning, and all the rest, that have enabled the innovations that are supported on this blog. Sure, many in the boomer category took the easy way out and worked for developers or spent their days reviewing subdivision plans (shoot me now). But the work done on the above-mentioned fields was first done by the boomers. The seeds of unlimited sprawl and motorways were sown, tended and reaped by previous generations.
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Add computers to that list Stevenz. I was operating and repairing computers from the late 1970s on in the printing and publishing industry. However, when I applied for jobs in that industry five years ago after being made redundant, I was told I didn’t know anything about computers and advised to learn how to drive a truck – I did, and it was the best move I ever made.
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Interesting (and good) to see that easy access to public transport ranks well ahead of easy access to a motorway.
(Maybe someone should show this to the NZTA and the MoT and its Minister.)