Stephen Hart: Next hot suburb? Listen to the call of the mall

Mall developers need lots of space to create shopping sites and that all-important carpark. Photo / NZ Herald

There are all sorts of hidden signs that certain suburbs are about to transform from ordinary, ho-hum neighbourhoods into highly desirable real estate enclaves, and with it deliver sizeable capital gains to their fortunate residents.

These days one of the best tips is to follow major retail developments.

Ever since 1963, when New Zealand got its first shopping mall in New Lynn, Kiwis have been embracing the concept of the mall.

Today's mega-malls bear little resemblance to 1960s LynnMall, but the principles remain the same - provide people with all of the retail and entertainment options they could want in a pleasant, convenient location, with good parking and easy access.

Mall developers need space - lots of it - to create shopping sites and that all-important carpark.

That means they tend to be drawn to satellite suburbs that are comparatively cheaply priced - think Mt Wellington's Sylvia Park in Auckland, Lower Hutt's Queensgate or Hamilton's The Base, for instance.

Developers also need retailers and anchor tenants to lease their space. The problem is that the people living in these outer suburbs are typically blue-collar workers with limited disposable income - not good for retailers.

So, developers look for suburbs close to motorways and major transport facilities to enable the affluent and well-to-do from slightly further afield to come shopping.

But the shrewd mall developer is also speculating on the likely gentrification of target suburbs.

First, because that means new locals will become high-spending consumers in their own right and, secondly, because land value appreciation will create a valuable appreciating asset to be reflected in rising rents and to be realised when eventually sold in the future.

A lot is at stake and developers invest heavily on complex population analysis tools to identify changes in the profiles of people moving to areas. This allows them to predict tomorrow's hot suburbs with remarkable accuracy.

If you are looking to buy a home in a neighbourhood with premium price growth potential, take advantage of the developers' research and keep your ears open for news about the location of the next major shopping mall.

Cathedrals of consumption

• New Zealand's first shopping mall was Lynn Mall which opened in New Lynn in October 1963 and is about to undergo a $50 million revamp.

• Riccarton Mall in Christchurch, our first fully enclosed mall, opened in 1965.

• St Lukes Mall attracted more than 100,000 visitors to its 12,000sq m of shops and 14,000sqm of parking on its opening day in 1971.

• Sylvia Park has more than 200 retailers, 71,000sqm of gross leasable area and 4000 carparks

• The Singapore Government Investment Corporation has just bought 49 per cent of five NZ Westfield malls for $2.1 billion.

• New South China Mall in Dongguan, China, is the largest mall in the world with a gross leasable area of almost 600,000sqm. It is nicknamed the Ghost Mall because 99 per cent of its stores are vacant.

• Dubai Mall is the largest mall in the world based on total land area, at more than 1.1 million sq m. It has more than 1200 shops, including the world's second largest aquarium.

• Stephen Hart runs hometopia.co.nz and buyers' agency Auckland Homefinders.

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