When you're making a purchase you want to think that you're getting value for money. The higher the cost of the item, the more important value for money becomes.
What does value for money mean when it comes to buying a home?
A simple definition is that: Value for money is achieved when both the house and the neighbourhood it's in deliver you a higher quality of life relative to what else you could buy for the same price.
What's more important? The house or the neighbourhood?
If value for money is about achieving a high quality of life, what's going to deliver that? Because urban planners focus on delivering a high quality of life to the inhabitants of cities, there's plenty of research that answers that question. A well-known Australian study* set out to measure what made the most difference to people's satisfaction with their house, their neighbourhood and their region. Guess what? House trumps neighbourhood and region. The authors found that housing satisfaction had the most impact on people's overall life satisfaction.
What makes people the happiest in their home?
The two leading predictors of housing satisfaction were the age of the house and the ability to control the temperature in the house. Perhaps the old real estate catch-cry, "location, location, location" needs a rethink. How about "insulation, insulation, insulation"? The size of the house fell a long way behind age and temperature control, although this factor was of greater importance to parents with children in the household.
What makes people happiest in their neighbourhood?
Of greatest importance to neighbourhood satisfaction was interaction between people, followed by a low level of crime.
We know so much more about what makes homes and neighbourhoods work for people than we did in the 1960s and 1970s when our last big suburban building boom was underway. Hobsonville Point, a new township 20 minutes northwest of the Auckland CBD, is in the unusual position of being developed from scratch. Urban planners have had the opportunity to design an entire community (eventually numbering 11000 residents) to provide all the things current research tells us makes for happy homeowners and well connected communities.
Cold homes make you miserable and sick.
Much of the Auckland's housing stock is poorly designed, built or maintained. This especially applies to homes built before 2000. Unfortunately that accounts for 1.3 million of New Zealand's 1.5 million private homes. We Kiwis spend 70% of our time indoors so the quality of our buildings counts.
The homes at Hobsonville Point are all built to standards that go beyond what is required by the building code. They are warm, well ventilated and easy to heat. We know from the research how important this is to health and wellbeing. The World Health Organisation tells us that homes should be kept to a minimum temperature of 18 degrees celsius. The average temperature in New Zealand living rooms in winter is 13.5°C . Brrrrr.
Bumping into the neighbours gives you a sense of belonging.
Returning to the key factors impacting neighbourhood satisfaction in the Australian study, homes and streets can be designed to facilitate interaction amongst the community. Hobsonville Point's density is based on early suburbs like Freemans Bay and Ponsonby. At around 200-300m2 per site, the homes are not spread out. Nor are the houses set way back far from the street and there are no high fences. These things make it more likely you'll bump into your neighbours when you're coming home or going out.
The streets are pedestrian and cycle friendly and the speed of traffic is carefully managed, encouraging people to get out on foot and kids to play outdoors. Most homes overlook the street. Urban planners call this 'passive surveillance' and they design it into the neighbourhoods so that there are less opportunities for crimes to occur.
There are numerous public spaces where the community can interact off the street, from small pocket parks to the 13 hectare Te Onekiritea (Bomb Point) park. Many of the homes are on rear laneways which gives kids another outdoor space for play. Finally, development is underway now to create a hospitality hub with restaurants, cafes, food markets and a micro brewery which will give residents and visitors a place to socialise on the waterfront.
Is value for money still achievable in Auckland?
Achieving value for money is becoming increasingly difficult in Auckland. The continuing upward march of prices forces buyers to make ever greater compromises to secure a home.
The average price of a home at Hobsonville Point is just over the $820,000 mark. This is more than Henderson, the same as Pakuranga and Albany, and significantly less than Greenhithe, Mangere Bridge and Mairangi Bay - all suburbs which are also a 20 minute drive, off-peak, from the CBD.
What the 'average' hides is that there is a range of homes available at Hobsonville Point to cater for the diversity that makes Auckland such an interesting city. We're not all the same, and international research shows that the most diverse communities also happen to be the strongest, most vibrant ones. To that end the township's developers are building many different types of housing, from single bedroom apartments through to five bedroom standalone homes.
Prices at Hobsonville Point currently range from $450,000 (for first home buyers) through to $1.75m. What makes these homes value for money is that they, and the neighbourhood they're in, provide a high quality of life for their inhabitants, regardless of the price they paid for their home.
What makes these homes value for money is that they, and the neighbourhood they're in, provide a high quality of life for their inhabitants, regardless of the price they paid for their home.
