Priced out of their own city

Many Aucklanders may now be wondering whether they will ever be able to afford to buy a home in the Super City if they don't own one already; and if they do own, whether their children will be able to afford one in years to come.

I have been on the expert panel of the New Zealand Herald series "Home Truths", which has been running in the paper and online this week and it's been an eye-opening process.

The series follows two couples looking to buy their first home, both with a budget of $600,000, as well as a single high school teacher with a budget of $480,000. What can they afford to buy in Auckland?

KiwiSaver incentives to help first-home buyers with deposits are capped for the Auckland region at $550,000.

I went through the process of looking for properties with a price tag of less than $500,000 and although I came up with more than 200 properties in the wider Auckland area, many have a catch.

They might be on leasehold land, they might have leaky issues, or they will be on the outer urban fringe of the Super City -- places such as Wellsford, Helensville, Parakai to the north and west or Pukekohe, Wiri, Port Waikato, Waiuku, Papakura or Manurewa to the south -- places that are hard to commute from if you are working in the CBD.

The rest tend to be apartments and for first-home buyers these may be more difficult to finance as will require a higher deposit to purchase (usually at least 30 per cent of the purchase price) as well as annual body corporate fees.

They also tend to be too small for families, so for those with children or wanting a stand-alone home with an outdoor space, what can they buy?

For the couples in Home Truths I looked at, what you could buy for $600,000 or less is a similar story. Some properties are available on Waiheke Island, there's the odd one in West Auckland suburbs of Glendene, Parau or Glen Eden, but properties in this price bracket are few and far between.

There are also the odd properties in places such as Greenlane, St Johns and Kohimarama, but these end up being on leasehold land and the rest are apartments or on the extreme urban fringe, which for many is not commutable.

Just three years ago if you had a budget of $480,000 you would have had quite a few options for buying a home in Auckland. Today this won't buy you much more than an apartment in the central city, but you need a large deposit for that and to be able to pay annual body corporate fees. Otherwise you need to go as far out as Wellsford or Manurewa.

Entry level is now more than $600,000 for a stand-alone house in anything other than the very outer suburbs of Auckland and the latest QV House Price Index shows values are rising again -- so it's not going to get any easier.