Homes, sections begin to shrink
‘‘The proposed district plan came out with a new set of rules and we've jumped on it.’’
Hamilton homes are shrinking as townhouses, apartments and semidetached residences proliferate.
Driven by the city’s population growth, buyer demand and the cost of land, every available bit of every section is being packed with home.
At one of the latest city developments, near Rototuna, developer Leon Da-Silva has built 14 semidetached homes - also known as duplexes - on a space originally earmarked for five stand-alone houses.
At $499 per square metre of bare land in Rototuna, complete with services, it wasn’t economically viable to build big.
Da-Silva’s solution was to build two-storey duplexes - that’s two three-bedroom dwellings with two bathrooms and a guest toilet at 140sqm of floor area each on a 560sqm section.
‘‘You’ve got 5000 square metres of paddock servicing one family and a cow and we’ve provided 14 new dwellings on it for residents in Rototuna,’’ Da-Silva said.
Hamilton City Council’s district plan allows for greater intensification of residential land, allowing a duplex to be built on a 400sqm section.
‘‘The proposed district plan came out with a new set of rules and we’ve jumped on it,’’ he said.
‘‘You can put it on an individual title, so there is no body corporate.’’
Small houses are being sold as entry-level and retirement homes, he said.
Empty nesters are flocking to them.
‘‘They’ve got a home they no longer need and this is a good model for them to downsize.’’
Duplexes have popped up in droves in established suburbs like Five Cross Roads, Hillcrest and Dinsdale.
Infill housing - where empty sections get multiple homes built on them, or houses are put in backyards or houses are completely removed and new structures built - is on target to meet half the demand for new houses, said Hamilton City Council acting general manager of city growth Luke O’Dwyer.
‘‘About 50 per cent of new consents we are getting are for infill housing,’’ O’Dwyer said.
Small homes are commonly found overseas and in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, he said and there is growing acceptance in Hamilton.