An apartment to call your own

Here’s something we need to get used to. Unless some startling new land-creating technology is somehow invented, the future of living in New Zealand must involve more apartments. Lots of them. Yet the suggestion by one KiwiBuild developer last week that living in an apartment will have a negative impact on your ‘‘Kiwiness’’ struck a chord because it is a truth so many of us hold.

Real home ownership in New Zealand, by and large, does not mean owning a third-storey apartment in downtown Auckland.

Real home ownership means having your name on the title of a stand-alone three-bedroom home in a sea of stand-alone three-bedroom homes in a suburb with a good but improving reputation.

It means a Saturday afternoon mowing the lawn, trimming the hedge every spring and autumn, having an overgrown vegetable garden, and a moss-covered trampoline for the kids, and spending at least one summer holiday in eight painting the place.

It means having two cars so you can get to work on time, shovelling 40 per cent of your household income into a mortgage and worrying about whether the low street appeal of your neighbour’s place has an impact on the resale value of yours.

There is nothing wrong with this but it is worth examining whether we strive for it because this is what we really want or because we’re simply repeating what our parents did.

Because if you considered the benefits of living in an apartment they really do stack up.

You’ll never need to mow the lawns, trim a hedge or spend a summer painting the house. You’ll have more money because generally apartments are located in or near the CBD and so you probably won’t need that second car.

Apartment owners also report feeling safer than in a stand-alone home and, counter-intuitively, spend more time outdoors than those who have a backyard.

There are, of course, downsides. On top of a mortgage there are body corporate fees and the politics that come with how that money is used. There are restrictions on what you can change to your own tastes, and having a neighbour on top, below and beside brings a level of stress that not everyone would enjoy.

The percentage of apartments making up new building consents is currently at its highest level but it is still just 10 per cent of new homes. That will need to grow and we should welcome it.

Great metropolises like New York, London and Paris exist only because of apartments. Were they to all opt for stand-alone homes the cities would be so appallingly sprawling as to be impractical to live in. Look no further than Auckland if you need an example of that.

New Zealand is actually a perfect place to live in an apartment. Our cities and towns abound in parkland. Most are on or near the sea and most have a central business district full of such useful things as libraries, swimming pools, cafes and restaurants.

Living in a home that gives you more time to make the most of these amenities is surely not just common sense, but Kiwi as.

‘‘If you considered the benefits of living in an apartment they really do stack up.’’