In Auckland, the council has been running an experiment, and at the heart of it is a bold decision to remove restrictions around zoning — but the New Zealand election could change things.
I wonder if this is about expectations of buyers? I would say most people in NZ would consider a detached house as normal and desirable and a flat/apartment as less so. They may get more money selling four detached houses than a quadplex.
The desirability would be for a range of reasons, but a big one that comes to mind is ownership structure. The pictured houses could be freehold with a shared right of way for access. A quadplex introduces a need to have a body corporate or some structure for maintenance of the shared building, and likely limitations on what changes you can make without getting approval from all the other owners.
Body corporates can be expensive and not having one is foolish. Even with townhouses I anecdotally know someone whose efforts to remediate their leaky house took many more years/dollars than it should have because the overseas owner of the abutting house kept refusing permission for things to do with their shared wall and roof section.
Yeah I feel like we don’t have the model quite right. A body corporate at least moves you to only needing a majority vote (actually only 50% I believe).
But we could go further.
What if we could apply to the local council and if the request was reasonable they could approve the work to proceed, and require the other party to contribute if applicable?
I’m sure it is about ticking the checkboxes for buyers’ expectations, on paper. But the end result is just that: nothing but ticking the box, while failing to deliver the actual benefit the feature implies.
It’s kind of like how my house has 4’ x 4’ closets in the bedrooms so they can be called “walk-in closets,” but the extra depth is fucking useless and all it accomplishes is to eat away from the square footage of the actual room. (I’m ripping them out to put in normal reach-in depth closets instead because I hate them so much.)
…Sorry for the rant.
Anyway, the point is that a well-designed apartment or townhouse can be lived in better than a poorly-designed detached house with no windows on two sides because there’s a pointless 2-foot gap between buildings just so they can tick the box of “detached,” but that’s the tradeoff that looks like it’s being made here. These things don’t even appear to have any greenspace (common or otherwise), while the example I linked to would fit on one of those lots and still have room to be set back from the street the same distance as the other houses as well as a shared back yard.
I wonder if this is about expectations of buyers? I would say most people in NZ would consider a detached house as normal and desirable and a flat/apartment as less so. They may get more money selling four detached houses than a quadplex.
The desirability would be for a range of reasons, but a big one that comes to mind is ownership structure. The pictured houses could be freehold with a shared right of way for access. A quadplex introduces a need to have a body corporate or some structure for maintenance of the shared building, and likely limitations on what changes you can make without getting approval from all the other owners.
I think you’re right.
Body corporates can be expensive and not having one is foolish. Even with townhouses I anecdotally know someone whose efforts to remediate their leaky house took many more years/dollars than it should have because the overseas owner of the abutting house kept refusing permission for things to do with their shared wall and roof section.
Yeah I feel like we don’t have the model quite right. A body corporate at least moves you to only needing a majority vote (actually only 50% I believe).
But we could go further.
What if we could apply to the local council and if the request was reasonable they could approve the work to proceed, and require the other party to contribute if applicable?
I’m sure it is about ticking the checkboxes for buyers’ expectations, on paper. But the end result is just that: nothing but ticking the box, while failing to deliver the actual benefit the feature implies.
It’s kind of like how my house has 4’ x 4’ closets in the bedrooms so they can be called “walk-in closets,” but the extra depth is fucking useless and all it accomplishes is to eat away from the square footage of the actual room. (I’m ripping them out to put in normal reach-in depth closets instead because I hate them so much.)
…Sorry for the rant.
Anyway, the point is that a well-designed apartment or townhouse can be lived in better than a poorly-designed detached house with no windows on two sides because there’s a pointless 2-foot gap between buildings just so they can tick the box of “detached,” but that’s the tradeoff that looks like it’s being made here. These things don’t even appear to have any greenspace (common or otherwise), while the example I linked to would fit on one of those lots and still have room to be set back from the street the same distance as the other houses as well as a shared back yard.
Oh for sure. I don’t know how you beat the buyer’s expectations, though!