Kerre McIvor: A bach is a luxury too far when others need a home

The glorious Hokianga Harbour. Photo / 123RF

I've spent my Christmas break up in the Hokianga, at our other home.

The first time I arrived in the Hoki, I fell completely and utterly in love. I hadn't been there until a couple of years ago, when a mate of mine enticed me up there, but the moment I crested the hill that overlooks the Hokianga Harbour and saw that beautiful vista before me, it was love at first sight.

I managed to persuade the husband that a four-hour drive was nothing, especially when it led to paradise, and within a couple of weeks of first discovering the Hoki — only 1100 years after Kupe and just shy of 200 years after Captain James Herd and the disgraced gun-running missionary Thomas Kendall, we had settled there, too.

We found a house with land down to the harbour and we have thoroughly enjoyed every break we've had there.

There haven't been nearly enough. Over the past two years, we've only got up to the Hoki four or five times a year, but knowing it's there is enough to alleviate the stress of living in a city.

The husband and I know that if the worst comes to the worst, we can just sell up and head north and we have plans to one day move there permanently.

But meantime, people like us, buying up "one day" properties are causing enormous pressure on the rental stock in the area.

Like Queenstown, like Wellington, Northland, too, is feeling the heat.

The Northern Advocate had a story a couple of months ago, on the shortage of properties and rising rents hitting renters with a double whammy.

That has been caused by an increase in the population — up 4000 last year — and people like us, buying properties we don't live in right now.

Apparently, Northland is one of the halo regions where the property and rental markets have been strong in the past five years. The pressure is worse in Whangarei but even our little community is feeling the pinch.

I received an email from a neighbour a month or so ago, asking if we'd be interested in renting our place to the principal of the local kura kaupapa.

She's building a house for her family but it's a slow process, and in the meantime she needs a place to live for the next two years.

I really, really don't want to be a landlord. We have the place on Airbnb and it has proved to be enormously popular with overseas visitors and locals alike.

Airbnb is all care and no responsibility and we're certainly earning more from that than we will from renting it long term.

And we love the place. The thought of not being able to visit for two years makes me very sad.

But at the same time, we're not there often enough to justify keeping it to ourselves.

The friends who introduced us to the area manage to get to their place at least 50 per cent of the year. We don't.

And it doesn't feel right to be profiting at a time when there is a desperate shortage of houses for locals to live in.

We are still able to keep regenerating the land. We have begun the long and arduous process of clearing the land of ginger and pampas and making it predator-free — and thanks to the hard work from a young man down the road, who's more a guardian than a gardener, we're seeing results.

So that work will keep going.

In the meantime, we're making the most of every single day in my favourite place on Earth.

And when we lock the door, at least it's not goodbye. It's see you soon.