Speaker 1: Yoda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. If there's
Speaker 2: one topic kiwis never get tired of talking about its houses.
Speaker 2: It's the biggest purchase most people ever making their lives.
Speaker 2: So if you're looking to buy it pasted, do your research. Fortunately,
Speaker 2: One Roof has today released its official ranking of the
Speaker 2: one hundred hottest suburbs across the nation. Alongside data partner Velocity,
Speaker 2: the experts have combed through every neighborhood in the country
Speaker 2: and rated them on factors like affordability, amenities and growth potential.
Speaker 2: Today on the Front Page, we're joined by One Roof
Speaker 2: editor Owen Vaughan to talk about their process and some
Speaker 2: of the surprising discoveries they made along the way. Oh
Speaker 2: and first off, what are our top suburbs this year?
Speaker 1: Our top suburbs. There's a bit of a surprise there.
Speaker 1: I think most people, when you put to them, were
Speaker 1: New Zealand's one hundred best suburbs. There'll probably be lots
Speaker 1: of different answers, probably Ponson Bay, graylen Omaha, Oriental Bay, Bendleton. Sorry,
Speaker 1: none of those make the cup. What we wanted to
Speaker 1: find out was the suburbs that had the most potential
Speaker 1: to grow. So we wanted to look at the next Graylands,
Speaker 1: the next ponds and bays, the next omahas, because look,
Speaker 1: everyone you talk to when you talk about real estate,
Speaker 1: they all go, Gosh, I wish I'd bought in grayle
Speaker 1: In in the nineteen nineties, or I wish I'd brought
Speaker 1: in Queenstown twenty years ago when no property was really cheap.
Speaker 1: And so we wanted to identify those areas, the areas
Speaker 1: that will be affordable for own buyers or people going
Speaker 1: into their second home, which will grow in value. So
Speaker 1: the place is in thirty years time whether they'll be going, God,
Speaker 1: I wish I'd bought there. And so the number one
Speaker 1: suburb is East Hammocky, and I think most people will
Speaker 1: be going, what what East Hamacke. Isn't that an industrial estate?
Speaker 1: How many houses are there?
Speaker 3: Look?
Speaker 1: East Hamakae residential suburb is a small sliver on the
Speaker 1: side of a big industrial estate. It's also sandwich between
Speaker 1: lots of suburbs that are seen as higher value. So
Speaker 1: like your howex your Halfman Bay's, your Danni Mora's, these
Speaker 1: are Auckland suburbs that are out in the east and
Speaker 1: they're seen as desirable because they're zoned for good schools,
Speaker 1: they've got lots of manitaying, or they've probably got some
Speaker 1: stellar views as well. If you're on the coast east.
Speaker 1: Haamackey is close to those suburbs. It's got a affordable housing,
Speaker 1: it's next to a huge employment center and it's just
Speaker 1: going to grow in value. Because of that. People will
Speaker 1: see it as a stepping suburb right now, but it
Speaker 1: will become the destination suburb in maybe five and ten years.
Speaker 1: So people who can get in now are going to
Speaker 1: be the people in thirty years time going I told
Speaker 1: you so.
Speaker 2: So I'm looking in Ace, Tamakay where else should I
Speaker 2: be looking?
Speaker 1: Where else should you be looking? Otahou, Otara, Mungery. Those
Speaker 1: are suburbs that don't usually make a list of the
Speaker 1: best suburbs in New Zealand probably kind of like make
Speaker 1: lots of other lists that probably are pretty detrimental to
Speaker 1: those suburbs. But I don't think that people should view
Speaker 1: those suburbs as being anything less than great places to live.
Speaker 1: And that's where we want to look at as well.
Speaker 1: It's not just is it decide a place where you
Speaker 1: can go to work. Is it going to grow in value?
Speaker 1: Because they're houses are deep cheap. We wanted to look
Speaker 1: at places where there's great amenity, and that usually means
Speaker 1: kind of now good schools or great restaurants, cafes, and
Speaker 1: these communities. When we went down and we talked to
Speaker 1: the people who live there, we talk to the agents
Speaker 1: who sell there. These are humming, vibrant communities and I
Speaker 1: think people who don't have any knowledge of these communities
Speaker 1: should go check them out. They are kind of no
Speaker 1: good places to live. You'll be able to get on
Speaker 1: the property ladder in Auckland at least in a very
Speaker 1: kind of like reasonable price. And so those are the surprises.
Speaker 1: Other places outside of Auckland, we've got lots of suburbs
Speaker 1: in Masterton, Fanganui, Gisburn, christ Church features prominently, Sydnym, the
Speaker 1: central city suburbs there. These are all great humming places
Speaker 1: that we've got developments that are happening around them. They're cheap.
Speaker 4: It's different points in the cycle. People are very interested
Speaker 4: in that kind of migration. The big centers out into
Speaker 4: kind of provincial towns and cities. If you want to
Speaker 4: call it that, And certainly after COVID that I whole
Speaker 4: push to get more space, you know, get the lifestyle
Speaker 4: dream or whatever it was. And you look at the
Speaker 4: stets and it's definitely not clear cat. There's always people
Speaker 4: going both ways, regardless of the point in the cycle.
Speaker 4: There's always people moving out to regions, there's always people
Speaker 4: moving back into the big cities.
Speaker 1: So if I was a first home buyer right now,
Speaker 1: these were to be the places that I would look happily.
Speaker 1: Not my own suburb features in the list. I did
Speaker 1: n't enjoy the figures. It got there on its own merits.
Speaker 1: Just let me tell you a better story about myself.
Speaker 1: I came to New Zealand. You could probably guess I'm
Speaker 1: not from New Zealand. Know what kind of accent is that.
Speaker 1: I'm from Scotland. And I rocked up in New Zealand
Speaker 1: just over ten years ago with my Kiwi wife, and
Speaker 1: we're looking for somewhere to live, somewhere to buy. And
Speaker 1: I think for most people, when you turn up to
Speaker 1: a new location, it can all seem a lot, it
Speaker 1: can seem very overwhelming, it's daunting. We all wish we
Speaker 1: could have Kirsty and Phil or the new Location Location Location,
Speaker 1: New Zealand hosts are becking call to go off and
Speaker 1: find us a house a great price, but we don't.
Speaker 1: We have to search and it can be time consuming
Speaker 1: and it could be really daunting. So we found ourselves
Speaker 1: looking at first in places like Saint John's in Auckland
Speaker 1: and that's a fairly nice suburb, but very expensive. We
Speaker 1: looked at Stonefields again, really nice suburb, really expensive, and
Speaker 1: we just didn't have that money to pay for a
Speaker 1: house like that. Even back in twenty fourteen, part of
Speaker 1: me wishes you should have just gone to the bank
Speaker 1: and got every money that you could have got and
Speaker 1: just got in a queen'stown. But we didn't make that
Speaker 1: decision where we ended up only hung Out. We started
Speaker 1: looking at suburbs that were on rail lines. I used
Speaker 1: to live in London and that was the key thing
Speaker 1: if you were looking to buy a house, buy a
Speaker 1: house next to a tube station, because you needed to
Speaker 1: be connected to get to work. And that's where we
Speaker 1: started looking. And we found only Hunga and that's where
Speaker 1: we bought and we love it there. It's a great humunity,
Speaker 1: but at the time it was really affordable, and we
Speaker 1: just see it growing in value, not from monetary point
Speaker 1: of view, but we can see the development that's going
Speaker 1: on down there. There's lots of new apartment blocks, lots
Speaker 1: of new cafes coming in the dressmark. That's a big
Speaker 1: feature of only Hunger that's getting redeveloped. So these kind
Speaker 1: of things make a suburb seem all the more impressive
Speaker 1: and all the more attractive to buyers. And so that's
Speaker 1: my little own personal story of I know what suburbs
Speaker 1: should be be going to. What are the factors that
Speaker 1: are the reasons you should go to a suburb?
Speaker 2: In terms of creating this list, so you mentioned that
Speaker 2: you spoke to local real estate agents and what kind
Speaker 2: of work went into finding and really digging in compressing
Speaker 2: this list and naming the one hundred best suburbs.
Speaker 1: So what we did was we wanted to create an index.
Speaker 1: We just didn't want to create out put a hole
Speaker 1: of the suburbs in a hat and go here's one,
Speaker 1: or we choose our favorite suburbs because it's all subjective
Speaker 1: when you do it that way, and everyone's got a
Speaker 1: personal connection to a certain suburb and thinks that that's
Speaker 1: a suburb that should go off. We looked at round
Speaker 1: about ten to twelve factors and created an index around that,
Speaker 1: and we measured the suburbs on those factors, so employment,
Speaker 1: resistance to price scrops, price growth, population growth, the turnover
Speaker 1: of a suburb, the amnity that's around there, of schooling.
Speaker 1: We definitely did do it in a methodical manner because
Speaker 1: really anecdotal evidence can kind of point you down some
Speaker 1: blind alleys, and this we felt was going to be
Speaker 1: the best case. But what we ended up doing was
Speaker 1: when we had that list, we went out to agents,
Speaker 1: We went to the people who sell there and kind
Speaker 1: of no buy there, and we wanted to get there
Speaker 1: kind of from a perspective on these suburbs. And by
Speaker 1: and large, what we found with our index was being
Speaker 1: reflected in the suburbs themselves.
Speaker 2: Were you surprised with the top five or ten?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was surprised that my own suburb didn't make
Speaker 1: number one, even though I'd paid a lot of people
Speaker 1: to do that. No, I was surprised by maybe some
Speaker 1: of the suburbs that were in there, maybe not the
Speaker 1: type of suburbs they were, maybe the names of the suburbs.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have picked East Hamaka mainly because I've never
Speaker 1: gotten to these tamiki before. I've only recently been there,
Speaker 1: and we wanted to get a sense of what's it
Speaker 1: actually like. And it's great. I love being there. It
Speaker 1: was kind of an eye opener whenever you got a
Speaker 1: new place and you can see, all right, I can
Speaker 1: see why people would want to live here, I can
Speaker 1: see why people have bought here. Some of those kind
Speaker 1: of results were surprising, and I've found out about lots
Speaker 1: of different places in New Zealand that previously I'd have
Speaker 1: no knowledge of, and that's always kind of fun. And
Speaker 1: hopefully that's what that list does, that people can see it,
Speaker 1: browse through it and say, all right, I never thought that,
Speaker 1: you know, buying and fung anui could be so great
Speaker 1: and it's going to go up in value at least
Speaker 1: kind of now, that's what the forecast say. So I
Speaker 1: think that's the joy of those kind of lists. There's
Speaker 1: always a kind of like a surprise entry in there,
Speaker 1: lots of prise entries, and I think it's going to
Speaker 1: be a good talker for people just going I didn't
Speaker 1: think wastamiki should and hopefully the residency East Tammochy will
Speaker 1: be going well, I told you so. I bought here
Speaker 1: for a reason.
Speaker 2: In terms of this being a resource for first home buyers,
Speaker 2: it's also a resource for those on their second and
Speaker 2: third as well.
Speaker 1: Hey yeah, look, there's certain suburbs in this list that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be considered first home buyer suburbs. I'd say Mount
Speaker 1: Eden would be one. You've got to be earning a
Speaker 1: lot of money to be a first home buyer in
Speaker 1: Mount Eden. But we didn't just go, well, what's the
Speaker 1: cheapest suburbs and then go for that. Mount Eden's got
Speaker 1: a lot of opportunity in scope to grow in value,
Speaker 1: so people who are buying now in that suburb, and
Speaker 1: for people who don't know what Mount Eden is, it's
Speaker 1: a inner city suburb in Auckland. It's got lots of villas.
Speaker 1: It's seen as kind of, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: top suburbs to buy in Auckland, largely because of the
Speaker 1: schooling that's on offer there. It's in a zone called
Speaker 1: double Grammar Zone and that's seen as pretty much an
Speaker 1: extra million dollars because you're in a zone for some
Speaker 1: of the best schools in the country. So that's been
Speaker 1: Auckland Grammar for boys and Epsong girls grammar. But also
Speaker 1: there's lots of private schools that are around there that
Speaker 1: lots of families who buy in these areas want to
Speaker 1: go to. We thought that because Mount Eden was close
Speaker 1: to aid in Terrace, close to where the new CRL
Speaker 1: line is coming in, it hadn't seen the crazy prices
Speaker 1: that now we had seen in remu Era, which is
Speaker 1: another double grammar zone suburb and gets all sorts of
Speaker 1: attention for ten million twenty million dollar house sales. Mount
Speaker 1: Eden is not in that league, but it's seen as
Speaker 1: a fairly prestigious and expensive suburb. But for people who
Speaker 1: can afford it and can get in, that's a suburb
Speaker 1: that's just going to grow in value.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of suburbs, and you've mentioned this
Speaker 2: with certain stakes mis around them and due to things
Speaker 2: like high number of reported crimes for example, how much
Speaker 2: does this affect a suburbs writing? Do you think is
Speaker 2: it a possible for an area to truly shake a
Speaker 2: stigma like that?
Speaker 1: Look, it's one of those things when people are buying
Speaker 1: its front of mind, you can't help but go, oh,
Speaker 1: I read that you know such and such kind of
Speaker 1: no bad crime happened on that kind of no street
Speaker 1: that's around a corner, or isn't that the place that
Speaker 1: somebody got salted, stabbed or whatever? Those are real issues
Speaker 1: for kind of no buyers. It may not be the
Speaker 1: number one issue for buyers. Prices usually that. But you
Speaker 1: want to feel safe in your community. You want to
Speaker 1: feel like you can walk outside and you know you're
Speaker 1: going to be in good company. But most suburbs in
Speaker 1: New Zealand have a certain element of crime that goes on.
Speaker 1: I mean Pons being a very desirable suburb, but we
Speaker 1: saw kind of arendous shooting earlier that happened and that
Speaker 1: does make people go eh, But does that stigmatize a suburb.
Speaker 1: I think you have certain suburbs in South Auckland, and
Speaker 1: certain suburbs are around the regions. There will be certain
Speaker 1: types of people that would have a dim view of them.
Speaker 1: And maybe that's been formed over years of a certain
Speaker 1: amount of negative headlines, a certain amount of poor employment,
Speaker 1: come of no prospects. But cities change, They're changing all
Speaker 1: the time. I grew up in a town called Dundee
Speaker 1: in Scotland, and where I grew up, I grew up
Speaker 1: in a council estate and the house that I've come
Speaker 1: from grew up and is still there, but the houses
Speaker 1: around it have kind of grown up over the last
Speaker 1: kind of ten fifteen years, and it's now coming from
Speaker 1: the suburbs which I grew up in. It's now saying
Speaker 1: it's very desirable. It's got lots of big house sales
Speaker 1: that I would never have thought possible. And I think
Speaker 1: that's the same for Auckland. I mean, just during the
Speaker 1: post COVID housing market boom, we were seeing people pay
Speaker 1: more than a million dollars for a house in Otara. Now,
Speaker 1: that used to be the joke, the Atara Millionaires Club
Speaker 1: with kind of You, that song which I can't remember now.
Speaker 1: I'm not from New Zealand, so if you asked me
Speaker 1: about the Proclaimers, no problem.
Speaker 3: He's known as OMC tang in cheek now meaning Atara
Speaker 3: Millionaires Club. I mean, I mean I say that, I
Speaker 3: mean it's it's really had to be in a point
Speaker 3: where she's surrounded by some really famous people and you
Speaker 3: don't know what to say, You're awkward, and you know,
Speaker 3: you knock out the glass of wine and stuff and
Speaker 3: people don't understand it.
Speaker 1: But Atara getting a million dollars. I was like, that's
Speaker 1: but that happened. People wanted to spend money in a
Speaker 1: house in Atara and they wanted to pay no seven
Speaker 1: figures for it. Now you're seeing a lot of new
Speaker 1: developments are happening in these South Aakland suburbs. The idea
Speaker 1: of slums of the past are quickly being forgotten. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of modern new housing there. I think most
Speaker 1: Aucklanders of a certain age would remember that Ponson Bay
Speaker 1: and gray Linn we're seeing as no go areas like
Speaker 1: don't want to go in pons and Me and graylan
Speaker 1: At that you will get mugged, you will get stabbed.
Speaker 1: It's a horrible area. And that was a little bit
Speaker 1: of classism, fear of different cultures, whatever. But these suburbs
Speaker 1: are no longer seen as that. They're seen as, oh,
Speaker 1: if I've got a lot of money, out buy a
Speaker 1: house in pons and Bay kind of suburbs. And that's
Speaker 1: what's going to happen with places like Atara Otahoo and
Speaker 1: I think most people who go there now we'll see
Speaker 1: kind of now the warmth of the communities, that there
Speaker 1: are communities where people want to have a great family lifestyle,
Speaker 1: and I don't think people should be put off by
Speaker 1: headlines because if that were the case, we should be
Speaker 1: staying away from pons and Bay's, We should be staying
Speaker 1: away from remnu errors, we should be staying away from No.
Speaker 1: Iraqis where one of the courtes we got from one
Speaker 1: of the real estate agents. Yes, there was a p
Speaker 1: lub in a much in Iraqi, and we've seen kind
Speaker 1: of like lots of bad headlines are owned lots of suburbs,
Speaker 1: cities change, and majority people who live in these suburbs
Speaker 1: are nice folk just want to go on with their lives,
Speaker 1: and I don't think we should tar them with some
Speaker 1: of the negative headlines that come out.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on That's it for this episode
Speaker 2: of The Front Page. You can read more about today's
Speaker 2: stories and extensive news coverage at enziherld dot co dot nz.
Speaker 2: The Front Page is produced by Ethan Seals. Patty Fox
Speaker 2: and Richard Martin are the sound engineers. I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2: Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look
Speaker 2: behind the headlines.