Straight out of Auckland: More Families ditch traffic and prices
The number of Kiwis leaving the country’s largest city has increased by 50 per cent. What’s driving them? By Stephanie Ockhuysen and Warwick Rasmussen.
Anita and Siva Affleck went from spending up to an hour in Auckland traffic to getting wherever they need to be in just three songs of a playlist. The couple, who run Global Baby, Ooh Bubs, as well as New Zealand distribution for Australian brand Babyhood, moved to New Plymouth, where Anita grew up, in July last year and have been running their businesses remotely since.
‘‘Every time we came to visit my parents, Siva always had a list of properties to see and I’d be like ‘no, no, no, no’. And then we just came here on Boxing Day and it was a beautiful, still day, probably the only still day of the year, and we just loved the spot.’’
They bought a one-acre section in Oakura, a small seaside town 15 minutes south of New Plymouth, built a beautiful, modern home, planted 163 trees, and are raising their three children Priya, 7, Remi, 3, and nine-month-old Sonny.
They had built in Auckland but say it wouldn’t be possible to do so again, nothing like what they have been able to do in Oakura anyway.
According to Stats NZ, Auckland’s population grew an estimated 2.2 per cent in the June 2020 year, with 37,000 more residents than in 2019.
The increase in population reflects gains from about 37,000 international migrants prior to Covid, and 12,800 more births than deaths, but was partly offset by the 12,600 who moved to other parts of New Zealand.
Paul Spoonley, a professor at Massey University and author of The New New Zealand: Facing Demographic Disruption, says the number of Aucklanders leaving the city each year to live elsewhere in the country is up around 50 per cent from a few years ago.
Housing availability and affordability combined with traffic, as well as debt and work overload are encouraging people to look elsewhere, says Spoonley.
‘‘I think Auckland’s rapid growth and the size of its population is one of the push factors for some people, particularly those that are thinking about starting a family and want somewhere more affordable and quieter.’’
Last month, median house prices in the Auckland region hit the $1m mark. Median house prices for the rest of the country excluding Auckland increased by 15.4 per cent in 12 months to October to reach only $600,000.
Then there are the pull factors. ‘‘Sunshine is a big factor, but also cheaper housing and cost of living,’’ says Spoonley.
Most Aucklanders leave for Northland, Waikato and the Bay of Plenty, and tend to fall into two categories: young families seeking a better lifestyle, and baby boomers about to retire.
For Anita, running the businesses remotely has presented challenges but as long as they’ve got a good internet connection it works. Global Baby, which they purchased in 2014 when Anita chose not to return to work after maternity leave, has a retail store in Epsom with five staff. Anita says she is able to oversee the store remotely via regular FaceTime chats with the store manager.
‘‘It seems to work, having trust in people is the biggest challenge. Letting them do their jobs and accept they won’t do it as you would but that’s how it is when you’re the boss anyway. You can’t be micromanaging remotely.’’
Before Covid, the couple tried to get back up to Auckland once a month but Siva says with the reduction in flights from New Plymouth it’s no longer that easy.
The last few times, they have driven the roughly five-hour trip but with three kids in tow it takes much longer, they say.
Anita says their Auckland social lives were dictated, not by their children, but by traffic. Because most people didn’t get home until 6.30pm
‘‘You’d be at a standstill in your car and you’d feel like a hamster on a wheel. Then you’d look across at the other hamsters in the other cars, and kind of think, it doesn’t have to be like this.’’ Paul Miller
it often ruled out doing anything after work. ‘‘Here you can do things every night of the week and three things on a Saturday so it’s much more social here. I like bumping in to people that I know.’’
The pair say it took a while to find a doctor, a bank and a dentist. But the move had been worth it, the lifestyle was more laid back and, although there were some big differences they noticed at the start, they had adjusted now.
‘‘We go to the YMCA on a Monday for kindy gym and that’s $6.20 and when we first moved I was like ‘woah, this would be like $20 in Auckland’. But then after being here for a while you just adjust and now I’m like, ‘woah $6.20’,’’ Anita laughs.
Both say they don’t think they ever would have moved to Taranaki if it hadn’t been for the family connection to the area. ‘‘People don’t know about it, it’s not on the way anywhere,’’ Anita says.
For Paul Miller it was the traffic. 90 minutes to two hours each day in his car, just to get to and from work, became too much. He had lived in Auckland for about 15 years, but being stuck on the city’s roads so much was a factor in pushing he and wife Kirsty south to New Plymouth back in 2014.
‘‘It wasn’t just the commuting. You’d get to the weekends, and want to get to the beach and you’d be at a standstill in your car and you’d feel like a hamster on a wheel. Then you’d look across at the other hamsters in the other cars, and kind of think, it doesn’t have to be like this.’’
With a young child and another on the way, the Millers decided to move closer to family support in Taranaki. They sold up a house near Greenlane, Auckland, and were able to afford a house twice the size in New Plymouth. ‘‘What you could get here, compared to Auckland was huge.’’
Miller works for TSB Bank, while Kirsty is a lawyer for a local firm.
He says Auckland is ‘‘a lovely place to visit’’, but couldn’t imagine moving back there.
‘‘When you’re there in the holidays or long weekends, it’s great. But if you go up almost any other time it can be pretty hellish.’’
Life in New Plymouth with Kirsty and their daughters Lucia, 9, and Cora, 6, meant ‘‘so much more quality time’’.
The city was ripe with opportunities for the Millers’ daughters, who enjoyed sports and other extracurricular activities. Miller also has time to perform gigs with his band, Rusty Az.
He said in Auckland you tended to meet people through one dimension, whereas in New Plymouth
a lot of interests intersected and you’d see familiar faces at different places and events.
‘‘That just makes things a bit closer here. People here are proud and welcoming, and it doesn’t take much to be a local. It’s not an insular place at all.’’
For every person that leaves Auckland, about four head in the opposite direction, says Spoonley, in search of jobs, education, cultural and sporting offerings. Auckland has between 50 and 60 per cent of the new jobs created each year.
Whereas previously Central Otago and Queenstown were major drawcards for internal migrants, that has completely gone due to Covid curtailing the tourism industry – and job opportunities – in the area.
Spoonley says the traditional trade-off has always been that you can get jobs in Auckland that you can’t get in other parts of the country. But with so many people discovering during lockdown that they could work from home, the lure of the laidback Kiwi lifestyle could become more even greater.
Hayden Judd was going for a run along the beach with his son Noah during a Christmas trip to Whakata¯ne when a spark of inspiration hit.
‘‘We’d run for a bit and then we stopped, and I just said to him ‘how good is this?’, Judd recalled. ‘‘And he said ‘why can’t we live here?’’’
‘‘I didn’t have an answer for him, and that kind of started the conversation. It was the first time any of the kids had said anything about moving from Auckland.’’
Judd had gone to school in the Bay of Plenty town, but had spent most of his adult life in Auckland. He and wife Sarah, a teacher, and their three children (Noah, Lyla and Sophia) had a house there, and the kids were settled in their schools.
‘‘We were doing OK in Auckland, house prices were great and we’d luckily bought at the right time.’’
The big move happened in April 2018, but not without some apprehension.
‘‘How the kids were going to handle it was the thing that freaked us out the most. We’d been looking at property for a while, but I was most concerned about the kids.
‘‘We knew there was going to be a transition to coming to a regional school, but we figured it’s the same thing that we did. We grew up in those same schools, I literally grew up in the same school.’’
Judd said he and Sarah ‘‘prepped the kids quite a bit’’ but the transition was ‘‘weirdly easy’’
because they had relatives who gave them their house for a month to get settled in.
‘‘Noah [now 13] was really keen to get here, the two girls not so much, because they really loved their lives and where they were, they were really nervous about it.’’
But those feelings melted away soon after the shift.
‘‘They just loved it. You don’t feel like you’re in so much of a machine. Even when they go swimming, they literally walk down to the pool.’’ Judd said he has no regrets about the move. ‘‘We’re sort of in the middle of town where we live, but five minutes away and we’re in the bush. We can go for a walk, or a run or a bike ride.’’
He said there was an unexpected bonus about living in Whakata¯ne, instead of Auckland.
‘‘More friends have come to see us and stay with us, than all of our time in Auckland.
‘‘Instead of seeing someone for an hour on a Saturday, we see them for a whole weekend.’’
While work is mainly home-based Judd does travel to Auckland a couple of times a month, so reckoned he got ‘‘the best of both worlds’’.
‘‘I love Auckland, I really love it. I’m really happy not to live there, though.’’