How to live on the edge

The Edgerley Apartments, 14-18 Edgerley Ave, Newmarket. Illustrations / supplied

14-18 EDGERLEY AVE, NEWMARKET

ON OFFER: 81 studios, one-bed, two-bed and flexi apartments in one five-level building on east-facing 3730sq m site with landscaped gardens and courtyard. Views include Mt Hobson and Newmarket business district. Close to Newmarket shops, motorway entrances and exits, Newmarket train station and bus routes.

SIZE: 35sq m for the smallest one-bedroom apartment through to 90sq m for the largest two-bedroom apartment, excluding balconies which range from 8sq m to 26sq m. Twelve ground-floor apartments have either balconies or courtyards and separate access through the common courtyard.

BODY CORP: Estimated from $1100 to $2500 a year.

ON THE WEB: theedgerley.co.nz

PRICES: From $470,000 to $1.38 million including one secure carpark for each apartment. A limited number of extra carparks are available for $80,000 each.

CONTACT: May Zhang, 021 899 277, or visit Barfoot & Thompson’s Epsom branch at 169 Manukau Rd.

Construction begins this month on a six-level apartment block in a no-exit Newmarket street that was home to the Auckland Officers' Club for 35 years.

The building that housed the club from 1972 to 2009 has been demolished on a 3730sq m site at the end of Edgerley Ave where developers Hermitage Homes is building the 81-apartment block.

The Edgerley will have four and half levels of apartments and one and a half levels of carparks on the street, which runs off the Epsom end of Broadway near the Newmarket Viaduct and the start of Great South Rd.

It was designed by Leuschke Group Architects, whose projects have included The Hilton Hotel and the redevelopment of Princes Wharf, and is being engineered and constructed by BGT Structures.

Rene Lin, of Hermitage Homes, who is developing The Edgerley with business partner Raymond Wang, says it will be a landmark modern building in the street which will be rejuvenated as surrounding, rundown, older properties are replaced or renovated.

Lin says more than three quarters of The Edgerley apartments have sold.

Most of those still available are two-bedroom apartments which tend to be more popular with owner occupiers than with investors who have bought many of the other apartments.

The block includes nine studio, six one-bedroom, 26 two-bedroom apartments, four two-bedroom apartments that also have a study and 36 "flexi" apartments with one bedroom and a study.

All apartments come with one car park as part of their price and all of the two-bedroom apartments have two bathrooms.

Lin says prices have increased by about 20 per cent since the apartments first became available for "pre-sale" in mid-2015 before the marketing campaign for them began properly in February.

Image 1 of 6: The Edgerley will feature luxury apartments near the Newmarket Viaduct. Illustrations / supplied

All of the studio and one-bedroom apartments have sold and average prices are now $927,000 for the remaining flexi apartments and $985,00 for the two-bedroom ones.

The top $1.38 million price is for a two-bedroom apartment on the north-facing side of Level 5 with a 26sq m deck and views that include the Sky Tower.

"Most of the apartments sold at the old price. We purposely stopped sales for six months to see how the market went," says Lin.

Location is the key selling point of The Edgerley, whose marketing slogan is "New Edgerley, New Life".

As well as being zoned for Auckland and Epsom Girls' Grammar, the apartments are on the doorstep of Newmarket's main shopping district and close to Southern and Northern Motorway entrances and exits.

They are also in walking distance to green spaces including Cornwall Park, the Auckland Domain, Mt Eden, Mt Hobson and Mt St John. The Newmarket train station and several main bus routes are only a few minutes away.

Lin says not having a swimming pool or gym in the complex will help contain body corp fees which are estimated to be between $1100 and $2500 a year.

"There are also plenty of fitness centres such as Next Generation, Les Mills and the Olympic Pools nearby so we didn't want to build facilities that would not be used."

Residents will have communal use of a central courtyard and landscaped gardens on the western side of the building that include two large protected trees.

Features of the solid concrete building include aluminum sheet cladding and glass walls on some sides of the stairwells to let in light.

Hermitage Homes also has approval to build the Bella Vista block of apartments in Herne Bay, which are not yet for sale. Construction of these Shelly Beach Rd apartments is scheduled to begin in early 2017.

Lin and Wang are also behind the four-stage Murphy's Park special housing development on 55ha of former farmland at Flat Bush. All 53 homes in stage one of this project have sold.