Auckland home owners count on spring to boost sales price

Ruth Flynn and her partner Stuart Cheeseman are among the home owners selling in spring in a hope for a boost in prices. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Ruth Flynn is among the Auckland home owners hoping the spring sun shines on their bank accounts as much as their gardens.

Flynn and partner Stuart Cheeseman have just listed their half-hectareWaimauku lifestyle block for sale with Mike Pero Real Estate Kumeu.

The timing of the sale is partly because they have to move to Tauranga for a new job and partly to capitalise on an expected jump in house sales brought on by spring.

Flynn said their garden came to life in spring, making it a much better time to sell than during the long, wet winter.

"We have tuis coming to get the nectar from the flowering pittosporum," she said.

"Our garden bank will very shortly erupt in freesias, we've still got camellias - with all the spring stuff happening there is colour everywhere."

Ruth Flynn and her partner Stuart Cheeseman have more than enough room for their dogs Oscar and Malachi on their Waimauku lifestyle block. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Flynn and Cheeseman were also looking to get a leg up from a boost in popularity of Waimauku lifestyle blocks.

Waimauku rose to be Auckland's best-performing suburb in the past year.

Itsmedian sales price jumped $160,000 or 14 per cent over the past year to $1.28 million, the latest OneRoof Valocity Property Report found.

Ruth Flynn and her partner Stuart Cheeseman are reluctantly selling their lifestyle property in Waimauku. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Flynn and Cheeseman, now aged in their 50s, bought their three-bedroom home and its huge block five years ago after earlier living in West Harbour and the North Shore.

Public records showed they paid $685,000 but that council valued the home at $1.075m in 2017.

Flynn said the 5346sq m block was ideal for a family, giving them room to keep a pony or build a BMX or motorbike track if they wished.

And having lived there, she could never go back to life in the city.

Typical house prices in neighbouring Kumeu had plummeted $355,000 in the past year - or almost one-quarter in value - to $1.14m and she said she could understand why.

The raft of new-build homes now up for sale in Kumeu seem like great buys, but Flynn had visited friends in them and said it wasn't for her.

"They are literally holding hands with their neighbours, who you can almost hear through the walls," she said.

It means the couple won't be buying new builds in Tauranga either, once they make the big move.

"We're only looking at lifestyle blocks."