Housing

New Zealand or Auckland is an awesome place to live, nothing to say about that, so where is the catch or where is the problem when thinking about moving here?

Housing, housing and housing – there is plenty of land: the country is more or less the size of Europe so it would be easy to host couple hundred million humans here. Auckland, the main city has only about 1.6 million humans yet accommodation, houses, apartments are really hard to find.

Last Christmas someone asked why I was not into buying a house, for older people that’s like a normal question, as awkward as asking “why are you still single?”

The main reason not to buy is that prices/location relations are not good at all, to get an affordable house (assuming there is a family, two incomes, kids etc. ) the options are small apartments in crowded areas, large houses away from the city or tiny houses/boxes in suburban but crowded areas. So location determines how much time you will spend commuting to work every day and what college will be in area for your kids.

I should probably give a summary of the different areas near Auckland later, but basically anything away from North Shore or Auckland CBD is a no go: low income areas, not so good education options and other social issues like violence or crime. It is not always the case, there are good areas as well and good people everywhere but there is always some social drama somewhere South Auckland, East Auckland, etc.

To illustrate a bit the housing/price point, below couple photos of a recent listing, house away from the city, typical setup, selling price about NZD 600.000 = USD 430.000 = CLP 311 million (11.000 UF/Chile)

I understand different countries have different realities and maybe the house below may look OK for you, but price/quality honestly is depressing (meaning really old houses, highly overpriced, selling even in very poor conditions like that)

So that’s the catch, living here is awesome, you just need to either bring a lot of money to find a good place for you/your kids/family OR just face the reality that you may need to be renting until your kids grow to adults.

Bonus point: a good article of why housing here is so expensive, plenty of land but someone has to paid for the development of it:

The Reasons Why New Houses Cost So Much | Newsroom

Quick related news: a house/villa (old 4 beds home) was purchased at $1.83 million then sold at $2.55 million… 7 months later! minor work/improvements done: pure market speculation, specially during a time people is buying anything.

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Photo by Patrick Pellegrini on Unsplash