Auckland apartment numbers to double

Auckland's 10,800 apartments could soon double in numbers.

By 2007, the city is expected to have 21,000 units worth $5.5 billion - home to more than 30,000 people.

The country's most qualified apartment data specialist is Wellington-based Ian Mitchell of consultants DTZ, who lives on a 4ha rural block - a far cry from the tiny apartments he spends hours plotting and studying.

On the apartment scene, Mr Mitchell has warning for many months that the apartment market is "headed towards an oversupply."

Here are Mr Mitchell's numbers:

* Inner-city Auckland has 10,800 units worth some $2.8 billion. Around 18,000 people live there.

* Another 4704 units, worth $1.2 billion, will be built by June next year.

* Another 1400, worth $371 million, are in the pipeline before 2007.

* An extra 4100 units, worth a further $1 billion, are being mooted or proposed.

Add up those numbers and you get 21,000 units worth $5.5 billion. If all that work goes ahead, Auckland will have an inner-city apartment-dwelling population of 30,600, but those people will have what Mr Mitchell politely refers to as "limited services available to them" - that is few supermarkets, recreational areas, parking, doctors, dentists or medical specialists.

"Put people in smaller places and they need more outdoor recreational areas," Mr Mitchell notes.

To redress that very problem, Auckland City levies high-rise apartment developers millions of dollars to maintain and expand green areas.

Mr Mitchells's data uses an average sale price figure for each apartment of $265,000 and calculates that the units have an average occupancy of 1.7 people.

Martin Dunn of unit specialist City Sales has calculated 6250 units in 40 blocks will be completed between January this year and next June.

"But the figure by the end of 2005 could be 7558," he said.

Sales during the winter were "remarkably robust, thank goodness". And he said he was expecting an equally strong spring. "But then, I'm a salesman."