Local schools play a big part in property-buying decisions for many New Zealanders. Photo / Dean Purcell
The Herald has analysed property prices for 337 Auckland school zones to discover where house prices are highest and lowest and where they’ve changed the most. Check the table below to see the results for your neighbourhood and across the city.
Tom Rawson might be living in Auckland’s most expensive secondary school zone, yet he believes he’s saving cash in the long run by not sending his children to private schools instead.
Home buyers like Rawson typically paid about $1.81 million in 2023 for houses within Glendowie College’s eastern suburban zone, according to analysts Valocity - making it the public high school catchment where families are forking out the most to live.
The zone, which covers Glen Innes, Glendowie, Kohimarama, Remuera, St Heliers, Saint Johns, Stonefields and Wai o Taiki Bay, is also home to the $102m mansion owned by New Zealand’s richest man, Graeme Hart.
Local schools play a big part in property-buying decisions for many New Zealanders, so the Herald has teamed with property analysts Valocity to reveal house and rental prices in more than 300 school zones across Auckland. You can add the name of a local school to the table below to see what it costs to own a house there and how much that has changed in the past decade.
Our analysis found Victoria Avenue Primary in Remuera is the city’s most expensive primary or secondary zone - even more pricey than Glendowie College - with homes selling in 2023 for a median price of $2.83m.
Bayfield School in Herne Bay in the inner west is the zone where prices have risen the most by dollar value over the past decade, jumping $1.3m between 2014 and 2023.
That means those buying a typical Bayfield School zone house for $2.78m in 2023 are potentially forking out about $14,500 in monthly mortgage payments - or $7700 more per month than they would have typically paid a decade ago.
We can calculate that using the 20 per cent deposit on a typical 2014 home and 2023 home in the school zone.
With the deposits, we can then use the average one-year fixed interest rate of 5.47 per cent in January 2014 and the 6.86 per cent average in January 2023 - as recorded by the Reserve Bank - to work out how much buyers would pay on the first year of a 30-year home loan.
Macleans College in the eastern suburb of Bucklands Beach, meanwhile, is the secondary zone where prices have jumped the most, rising $739,500 in 10 years to a median price of $1.68m in 2023.
School choice can play a major part in setting house prices, with real estate agents promoting popular high schools with phrases such as “Grammar zone” in their marketing. In other cases, the price has more to do with other factors - such as a high number of apartments in the neighbourhood which keeps the average price lower.
However, school zones remain a popular reference point for many New Zealand buyers, especially in Auckland.
Living inside Glendowie College’s zone was a non-negotiable for Tom Rawson and his wife Anna, who paid $2m for their Glendowie home.
Anna studied at Glendowie in the late 1990s and the couple believe it delivers such a high quality, free education there’s no need to pay extra to send sons, Freddie, 6, and Jagger, 3, to a private school.
Instead, Rawson has used the money saved on private school fees to buy a second property in his sons’ names. He hopes it will give them a leg-up later in life or be used to cover costs like university.
“We bought with a 20-year mindset, and we made sure we were in the Glendowie zone,” said Rawson, co-owner of Ray White Manukau real estate agency.
“Private schools’ fees are pretty hefty now, and I thought I’d rather put the money towards their future via something else, like property.”
Glendowie College principal Gordon Robertson sees a familiar arc in the Rawsons’ story.
He’s been teaching at the college for 37 years and often sees former students return to the eastern suburbs to send their own kids to the school.
“It’s a desirable area,” he said about the college zone that includes a swathe of beautiful Auckland coastline from Wai o Taiki Bay to St Heliers Beach.
“They’ve enjoyed growing up there themselves and enjoyed the school, and so they want the same for their children.”
And it’s not just beaches and harbour views keeping house prices high.
Glendowie has fewer new townhouses and apartments than other well-known zones - such as nearby Auckland Grammar (with a $1.15m median sales price in 2023) or the North Shore’s Westlake Boys’ and Girls’ High Schools ($1.28m).
“Until the recent change to [planning rules], I think it was very hard to subdivide, and so you tend to have big family sections, which are more expensive,” Robertson said about his zone.
Fewer apartments and new housing means the zone’s population is also growing more slowly.
Given public schools are obligated to accept and provide free education to all children in their zones, that places less pressure from growing classroom sizes on Glendowie College with its 1210 students, Robertson said.
By contrast, the North Shore’s 3772-student Rangitoto College and the 2688-student Auckland Grammar have swelled in size, along with increases in apartments and infill housing in their zones.
It means Glendowie College is often described as a country school in the city, Robertson said.
“It’s a more personal-type environment where more people are likely to know each other,” he said.
Glendowie College is in a pocket close to many of Auckland’s most expensive suburbs.
The next three most expensive secondary zones are all nearby: Epsom Girls’ Grammar School (with a $1.75m median sales price in 2023), Macleans College ($1.68m) and Selwyn College ($1.55m).
Takapuna Grammar on the North Shore is the fifth most expensive zone, with a typical house price of $1.52m.
Real estate agents often describe Victoria Ave in Remuera as one of Auckland’s most prestigious streets, along with Remuera’s Arney Rd, Paritai Drive in Orakei and Cremorne St in Herne Bay.
Recent house sales on the street include the $23.8m sale of a 1000sq m, five-bedroom home previously owned by rich-listers Martyn and Jacqui Reesby, settled last year.
Another spectacular mansion, at 95 Victoria Ave, previously owned by Team New Zealand chief Grant Dalton, was listed for sale last year with a price tag of more than $20m.
While these homes might not all be in zone for Victoria Avenue Primary, it illustrates why the 421-student school has Auckland’s most expensive zone, with a $2.83m median sale price in 2023.
Families wanting to get into the zone face high barriers.
To simply buy a median-priced home in 2023, families will have typically needed a $565,000 deposit and to have borrowed $2.26m from the bank.
According to the Reserve Bank, the average one-year fixed interest in January 2023 was 6.86 per cent, meaning these home buyers will have had to pay about $14,824 in monthly interest payments.
Behind Victoria Avenue Primary, the next most expensive zone is Bayfield School ($2.78m), which covers parts of Grey Lynn, Herne Bay and Ponsonby.
Westmere School, covering parts of Grey Lynn and Westmere, was next, together with Churchill Park School in Glendowie and St Heliers, both with a typical 2023 price of $2.23m.
Ponsonby Primary School ($2.05m) and Stanley Bay School ($2m), covering parts of Devonport and Stanley Pt, rounded out the top six.
Exclusive Bayfield School, with just 331 students in Auckland’s inner west, feeds an area where house prices have risen the most between 2014 and 2023, jumping $1.27m.
That’s not so surprising, given its zone - covering parts of Grey Lynn, Herne Bay and Ponsonby - includes some of Auckland’s most expensive and luxurious waterfront homes, owned by rich-listers, actors and celebrities.
Zuru billionaires Nick and Matt Mowbray bought a $24m waterfront Spanish-style villa in the school zone late last year, according to property website OneRoof.
New Zealand’s most expensive street - Cremorne St - is also in zone, with mega-mansions worth an average of $13m each that include the about $30m home of marina developers Simon and Paula Herbert.
Briscoe Group chief executive Rod Duke’s $21m mansion, complete with a boat shed and private helicopter, is just outside the school’s zone.
The huge jump in Bayfield School zone house prices means buyers of a typical home now need to almost double the deposit they put down, from $301,000 in 2014 to $555,000 in 2023.
A 2023 buyer would also pay twice as much in monthly mortgage payments, up $7748 per month compared with 2014.
Home buyers in Auckland’s far eastern suburbs are living in the secondary zone where prices have jumped the most in the past decade.
The typical home in the Macleans College zone is now $1.68m, jumping $739,500 since 2014.
It means buyers of a typical home in the school’s zone suburbs - Bucklands Beach, Cockle Bay, Eastern Beach, Half Moon Bay, Howick and Mellons Bay - are having to fork out a lot more in mortgage payments to the banks.
A 2023 buyer would typically need $336,300 to afford a 20 per cent deposit on their home - that’s $150,000 more than they would have needed in 2014.
It also means they would be borrowing about $600,000 more from the bank and be paying an extra $4559 in monthly mortgage payments in their first year compared with 2014.
Valocity’s Wayne Shum said that like Glendowie College’s school zone, Macleans’ zone is still largely made up of bigger land blocks, which has helped to drive its median price higher than other well-known high school zones such as Auckland Grammar’s.
Ben Leahy is an Auckland-based journalist covering property. He has worked as a journalist for more than a decade in India, Australia and New Zealand.
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