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After spending more than two-and-a-half hours commuting between Auckland and Hamilton every day, Stacy Toe Toe is looking forward to a new life and job in Hamilton.
Toe Toe, 24, was born and bred in Auckland's Papakura, and moved to the Waikato a month ago with her partner Clayton Campbell and their children Ocean-Lee, 7, and Clayton, 4.
After just a few weeks living in the northeastern suburb of Rototuna, 5km from the city centre, she is a convert.
Family visits to Auckland just didn't "feel right" any more. "But every time we come back to Hamilton it does feel right."
And the hour-and-20-minute commute each way while Toe Toe worked out her notice at a freight-forwarding company at Auckland International Airport proved "too much".
This week, she will look for part-time work in Hamilton while Campbell builds up his concrete tile roofing businesses.
While their lifestyle has improved, the move has cost them more than $185,000. They left behind a bungalow in Papakura on 1112sq m, which they sold for $399,000, and bought a house on a 700sq m section in the new subdivision for $585,000.
Toe Toe thinks the price was "a bit high", but the couple believe the area and the house are better for their children.
Hamilton has undergone something of a renaissance. Today, it owes much of its economic strength to technology-based industry rather than dairy farming. The price of real estate is one tangible measure of the region's progress.
In the past four years, property prices have increased by 95 per cent, and they've risen 20 per cent in the past 12 months alone.
Jeremy O'Rourke of Lodge Real Estate attributes the increases to population growth, particularly of high-earners.
"We've had a rapid growth in prices due to a lot more [properties] being sold above, say, $400,000 or $450,000. There seems to be more affluence coming into the city," he says. "Last year, the price range from $400,000 to $600,000 would have represented about 15 per cent of the market. Now it's more like 30 per cent."
O'Rourke says demand is strong in new subdivisions like Rototuna, which he says is good value compared with the "sky-rocketing prices" of more-established suburbs closer to the city.
"If you go out to the northeast you're probably able to buy a lot more," he says. "Brand new, double-internal access, four bedrooms, en suite on a 700sq m section, for around $500,000."
Mayor of Hamilton Bob Simcock attributes some of his city's gains to problems further north. "Auckland is becoming unliveable for too many people," he says. "They look over the Bombays and they see they can get in [here] cheaper.
"They're finding a city that's large enough to have a diversity of employment options. The quality of life they're looking for is there. And they can make it work for them."
Simcock says Hamilton's growth rate doubled over the previous two, five-year periods, from 5.6 per cent to 11.2 per cent. "Twenty or 30 years ago it was a town people moved through. Now, it is a city where people have invested in businesses, done well and are reinvesting in the city."
While dairy farming still plays an important role, it is clearly no longer the only game in town. "The economy is quite diversified," he says. "Industries that started out as service industries to agriculture are now making their living off things that are non-agricultural."
He cites as examples the Gallagher Group which has moved from electric fencing into programmable security systems, and NDA Engineering, which began manufacturing steel vats for the dairy industry and now services food processing industries.
Brian King of Harcourts real estate company has also observed a discernable drift of Aucklanders south, and says the property market has been boosted by middle-managers with young families transferring to the city.
King says some of Hamilton's recent price gains may be explained by property being undervalued for some years, and sees the recent price escalation as a catch-up.
