Auckland 2038: The super city is starting to grow - upwards

Wednesday, 9 January 2019

Big, brash and bold, Auckland is a city in the fast lane. But how will it look in 20 years' time? Stuff asked the experts to gaze into their crystal balls to predict the super city of 2038. In the third of our five-part series, we look at housing. 

The year is 2038 and Auckland has grown upwards.

Some say it had to - rewind 20 years, in 2018, and it was a super city hungry for land.

'One thing that I'm very aware is that Auckland has to be rid of what we've been doing for pretty much 50 to 60 years now and that is just being a sprawl city with lateral growth,' Auckland Council planning chairman Chris Darby says.

'We're already encroaching on the productive lands that actually will be required to sustain the growing Auckland, so we've got a challenge there.'

**READ MORE:

* Auckland 2038: The Superdiverse City

* Auckland 2038: Jobs, but not as we know them 

* Auckland apartment market forecast to rise again

* 'I want to raise my family in an apartment'**

Fast forward to 2038, and our living habits will be familiar, but different, Darby says.

The city will be 'slightly more vertical'.

'And I'm not suggesting that we're all going to be living in high rises,' the councillor adds.

'I think it's more of a medium-rise city around the city centre, the main centres and transport nodes.'

In 2018, houses remain king in Auckland.

In October, Auckland Council consented 672 houses, while just 55 apartments got approval.

Compare that to a year earlier – in October 2017 - Auckland Council consented 532 houses and 64 apartments.

But the numbers show apartment developments popping up in sudden bursts.

In August alone, 404 were consented. A month earlier, in July, 320 were approved – in total, 640 apartments and townhouses were consented that month, while standalone houses accounted for 562 consents.

In May, 419 apartments were given the green light.

And the pros agree with Darby – Auckland, they say, will grow upwards.

Apartment Specialists' director Andrew Murray says Aucklanders 'didn't even want anything to do with apartments' less than 10 years ago, but that's set to change.

'You're going to have apartments explode,' Murray says.

'I reckon by 2038 we'll have easily double the amount of apartments we have now.

'If we've got approximately, say 30,000, we're going to have 60,000 on the CBD and fringes.'

If Auckland wants to become this truly international city, its housing habits will have to change.

'So you're going to have people … always in apartments, they will never have a house, just like it is in a lot of major cities in the world.'

The way Murray sees it, Auckland is behind when it comes mega city housing trends.

'You can't actually put any more houses in, so where the hell are we going to live?' he asks.

'We're not going to commute for two hours each day, so you're going to have to fit that population into the current land mass.

'They can't put in two villas on a section these days, but they'll split it up into half, then they'll realise that's not good enough, so they have to go upwards.'

Darby says New Zealand's fascination with home ownership may well have changed by then too.

The North Shore councillor points to the way things are overseas.

'I'm very familiar with the German situation,' he says.

'There you have a very affluent country where you have a low ownership rate and people will rent for 10, 20, 30 years the same home.

'We don't have housing tenancy rules that support that at the moment.'

So will we see the rise of the renters? Darby says tenancy rules will have to be looked at before that happens.

'We have to validate that as a way of living in a home and we need to support those that choose that particular way of living in a home,' he says.

'At the moment, the tenure rules are weak in favour of the renter, and they're very strong in favour of the landlord.'

Renting is a 'global trend', Darby adds.

'People are starting to see that they can better utilise their capital by investing in other things.

'If you look at the Germans, they are well invested in equities, in businesses and that's where they make their money.

'We are preoccupied here still with the quick-buck profits, the superannuation scheme that is buying up houses.'

Murray identifies two reasons for Auckland's upward growth – land prices and convenience.

'Land has become so much more expensive and so people don't have the option to buy a house anymore,' he says.

'A first-home purchase now, as we get more and more years, will never be a house.'

As for convenience, Murray says he constantly deals with buyers who are after what he calls 'instant gratification'.

'We want stuff now – we can't be bothered walking a kilometre or 500 metres to go and get food, we'll get Uber Eats,' he says.

'It's not being in traffic, it's not taking buses.'

Today, Darby says there is a perception that buying on Auckland's fringes is cheaper.

That may be when it comes to the house and land prices, but Darby says there are other costs to be wary of.

'Probably the one thing I don't think readers and Aucklanders quite get is that a so-called cheap house on the outskirts always comes with a motoring mortgage,' he says.

'That is not 2038 in my eyes.

'They invariably look at that possibly cheaper home, though that's changing quite quickly because people are waking up to the value of proximity to learning and earning.

'But that motoring mortgage is only going to get bigger and when you factor that the most expensive housing is actually the housing that eats into your day, because you're commuting for three hours or four hours and the running costs of a private motorcar to get you to and from and the rest.'

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