‘Auckland’s just got ridiculous’

Tired of three-hour daily commutes and wanting better value for money, an Auckland couple are selling up and heading for a new life in provincial South Island. Intermediate-school teacher Joyce Shankar-Kay, 41, and her police detective husband Matt Kay, 45 (left), are escaping the “rat race”. Shankar-Kay, a teacher of 17 years, told the Herald the couple had sold their small three-bedroom Clarks Beach home for $690,000. In its place they've purchased a fourbedroom 2013 home on 1000sq m (a quarter-acre) of land for $465,000 in Geraldine.

They have no intention of returning.

“We're getting away from the traffic as well as the rat race, the cost of petrol and cost of rates.”

Both are experienced in their professions and earning top-tier

salaries in their chosen fields.

But they were unable to afford to buy in central Auckland, so the couple scraped in on the city’s outskirts five years ago before prices ballooned beyond their means, and that of countless colleagues.

Shankar-Kay said she spent about three hours a day commuting between her home on the southern edge of Manukau Harbour and her workplace in Mt Wellington.

She said she had colleagues considering a move to Australia because they want to own their own home and have a better quality of life. “I have good friends, couples, who are both teachers who are unable to afford to buy in Auckland. They’re paying $500 [a week] in rent so they don’t have enough to purchase a property.”

An alternative was to move to another New Zealand region where houses were cheaper but jobs were often harder to find, she said.

“So do you live in the city, pay more rent and not have a house and have a job, or move out [of Auckland], buy something cheaper and try to find work?

“Auckland’s just got ridiculous.”