For the past few weeks, I have watched builders put the finishing touches on a new, simple but striking townhouse in Mt Albert, Auckland. Every time I drive past, it catches my eye. There are two of them but just one is on the market.
I’m a bit interested. It’s attractive from the road but a closer inspection reveals it’s a duplex, or twin house. That means each house is identical and only separated by an internal wall. One of my son’s best mates lives in the same street, and they’re urging me to buy. A bid of around $1 million might go close to securing it. But who knows? It’s a lot for a box on steroids.
Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and lounge and a small upstairs deck that could take a small table, as long as it’s folded up at all times and not used as a table, ever. The garage might fit a mid-size car, as long as the space around it is barren and you don’t need to open the doors.
I sneak around the back and there’s a deck big enough to host a full, restricted-grade rugby team at a pinch, no room for plus ones, or it could probably cope with half an open-weight rugby team. The barbecue might be able to be a three-burner at a pinch; two burners will fit more comfortably. I hope whoever is in the downstairs bedroom is a huge fan of indoor-outdoor flow and doesn’t mind the rugby team stampeding through their room to get on to the downstairs deck, because that’s how it’s designed. Needs must.
But these designers have not left a pebble unturned. If the downstairs bedroom is occupied by someone sleeping or texting or TikToking or just generally being captured by thousands of their friends on social media, then there is a small garage and at the back of that is a single door to access the deck.
So, a clever real estate marketer could say: “The alfresco deck is accessed by not one but two flowing downstairs doors which adds to the truly blissful holiday feel of this lovely all-day sun trap.” A more honest battler might say: “There’s a deck but it’s on another level and far away from the upstairs kitchen and living space and to access it, it might be best to squeeze past the car in the small garage and then through a tiny laundry, which has a single door that takes you on to the deck, which will soon lose its all-day sun thanks to another property being built on the border fence that acts like a giant screen.”
Also, there is no other land to help the price appreciate over time. The house covers the maximum space it possibly can.
I have questions. What if the neighbour is a hoarder who keeps everything on his driveway under a tarp? What if he or she or they are serial clothes’ washers that hang everything out the windows, so it looks like Aladdin’s mum’s place? Can I tell them to sort it out or not to turn the place into a laundrette? Maybe, if you have a set of rules like a body corporate, but I doubt two houses qualify for that. What if they like the stereo on, loud, all day, every day?
Thanks to a divorce, and a six-figure legal bill, I’m back at square one in the housing game. To anyone looking at this predicament, my first piece of advice has nothing to do with housing. Instead, it’s to avoid the lawyers; just halve the house, shake hands and run for freedom if you can!
So, I need to get a house soon. I can’t live with my mum – generous, loving and supportive as she is - and play a stale version of Bad Boy Bubby forever, and my own son needs space to chill-lax with his mates – even if they are texting each other while sitting next to one another.
House-hunting is depressingly difficult, especially after living in a nice house with plenty of room and a pool I put in for the kids.
There are tonnes of developments going up like the one in Mt Albert, and they’re a trap for would-be homeowners with no body corporate or even a set of rules to keep the place in order. You ride your luck and hopefully the high price keeps out the riff-raff.
But there’s no escaping the obvious trend I’m seeing in every street; the quarter-acre paradise has been exchanged for the postage-stamp nightmare. And the winner has cashed in the gain leaving you a small corner to call home. The only thing that hasn’t reduced is the asking price.
To secure that Mt Albert townhouse I’d have to front with a $200,000 deposit and have an income that can service an $800,000 mortgage for the next 25 years, which gives you the right in 2049 to say you own it.
Will it still be there in 25 years? It sounds like a life-sentence to me. I might die before the debt disappears and I certainly had never planned for that. Okay, I’m being a bit cynical, but this is a dilemma faced by those of us starting again in midlife. We’re having to buy again on a limited budget at a time when the words “housing” and “limited budget” don’t enjoy each other’s company. Maybe housing on a limited budget works in Nightcaps, Southland.
The auction for this half townhouse is set down for February 21. It’s in my diary. I don’t know why. Nothing else is.
But perhaps another option has presented itself. I was at Westhaven Marina, chatting to some old(er) timers about (high) costs of setting up new media channels. As they left, I noticed a sign reading “boats for sale”.
Saddled with a mortgage or free on the high seas?
As I started to walk and look at the boats – well, boats undersells them really, we’re talking about launches of some 43 feet long with price tags in the $2-$3m mark – another idea took shape. I could get a “mansion” on the sea for $500,000, which, for that price, would be pretty fancy, especially when compared to say, a one-bedroom flat in Henderson.
So, a house on the sea or a house in a suburb all at sea with life’s social problems? It’s the boat and have money left over. Or it’s the flat in H-town and have a mortgage noose around my neck for 25 years.
Then I saw a launch I was serious about. Seriously. Nowhere near half a million, about the same cost as the divorce lawyer. It’s a decent length, has two massive engines, solid and reliable with an amazing history. There are 3 double beds, 4 singles, a massive lounge and kitchen on the mid-deck, a huge outside area and an upper deck to sit on and be anywhere I want to be or nowhere at all. Both have sea views.
I acknowledge it sounds a little unconventional, but I wouldn’t be the first one to live on a boat. In Europe it’s common, a lifestyle choice that is celebrated. Some marinas still won’t allow it here, but more are saying, “go for it”, recognising housing is a battle.
Closer to home, I’ve known people who lived on a docked boat in Chaffers Marina in Wellington, with their kids and swore by it.
We’ve been conditioned to think we must have the house, the kids, and the backyard, but increasingly that’s a house, across three levels, no outside area to speak of, and neighbours you can shake hands with while sitting on the throne.
Is that really the “dream”? And when, for many of us, we wake up from the dream to cold reality, then it’s about working out what is left from the rubble, what’s important, and what’s achievable. At that point, all the traditional stuff goes out the door and you get creative.
At some stage in your life, you have to do what makes you happy because, well, it’s your life, and those who have an opinion on how you’re living it are irrelevant, self-important and wasting their breath.
We have one life. There’s no dress rehearsal or any script to follow, despite what we may have been encouraged to think or feel.
So, a spacious home, two decks, with sea views; marina fees, but no rates or body corp fees. The ability to travel and not sit in Auckland traffic. I just realised life is great again! I can get my own pad again. It floats. And at just $175k, it’s cheap, about the same price as what they spend in Auckland putting in a pedestrian crossing.
There must be a catch. I’m hoping that’s just snapper. If you’ll excuse the marine theme, I’m doing my due diligence wondering what are the fishhooks?
