When Suzy Aiken bought her first home in Islington St, Ponsonby in 1992 for the princely sum of $150,000, it was the location that sold it to her.
"It was the perfect place for the young working woman I was then. It was two bedrooms so I shared it with
a girlfriend - we had lots of fun." That flatmate, Mandy McPhail, remembers the fun, but she also remembers that she had to put her coat on when she went inside the house.
Built in the 1920s it was the archetypal bungalow of that period with no attention paid to the orientation towards the sun or the outdoors. Facing east-west, the northerly side had almost no windows, and although it was tidy and sound throughout, Suzy agrees that it was the coldest, dampest house she has ever lived in. She doubts that it had any insulation in the walls. "I put some in the ceiling, but it didn't make much of a difference from my recall.
"It was painted a serviceable cream throughout with a particularly 80s shade of apricot in the carpet. To this day I cannot have anything resembling that colour around. I don't know why, I just don't want to repeat it."
She spent what was at the time a tidy $20,000 improving the usefulness of the outdoors at the rear. "After it had been terraced I could stand on the top terrace and see my girlfriend in her house two doors up."
By 1995 Suzy realised it had made an appreciable capital gain and sold it to take the next step on the housing ladder: an unrenovated but much bigger villa a couple of streets over.
"I was still only in my mid-20s, with boundless energy and enthusiasm for that sort of thing - that was a learning curve. But I'm glad I did it. It taught me so much."
