House-hunting
The Goldilocks suburbs for first-home buyers are New Lynn and Glen Innes.
They started by looking at houses in the Auckland suburbs they’d like to live in before reality intruded and the search shifted to places they could actually afford. That led the couple to New Lynn in 2015.
“We came out to look at the open home, and my wife said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been to New Lynn before’ — she’d lived in Auckland for 30 years,” said Roberts, who works as ZM radio station’s drive show presenter.
Despite that, the couple bought the three-bedroom home they looked at, which also came with a sleepout and was within walking distance of the train station.
Roberts said that for the same price in Waterview and Sandringham they would have been able to pick up only a twobedroom unit or apartment.
“For what we could get for our money, it was worlds apart.”
Initially, they approached their new life in New Lynn in a matter-of-fact way.
“We came into it with the idea this was where we can afford to live, so let’s just do it,” Roberts said.
“It wasn’t until after we lived here that we realised how great it actually is.”
Not only could they walk to the train station, but cycleways also led directly from their house.
“It’s great to be able to just jump on the train and you can be at the rugby or the cricket at Eden Park straight away,” Roberts said. However, he and his wife still drove to the city each day because they had dedicated car parks with their jobs, he said. If they were paying for parking, however, the train would be a better option, despite it being a tad slow because the rail line currently “dog-legs” through Newmarket.
Roberts predicted the City Rail Link project to be a “game changer” because it would speed the journey greatly by routing the tracks through Mt Eden direct to the CBD.
New Lynn was also nice because it was close to picturesque Scenic Drive in Titirangi, Piha and the western beaches and the local walking beach at French Bay, which was only five to 10 minutes from their home, he said.
New Lynn had a “great community feel” and was “self-contained” with LynnMall and The Brickworks bar and restaurant precinct, a Les Mills gym and nice primary schools and child-care centres, he said. New housing was also springing up. “We walk a lot because we’ve just had our first baby, and there is heaps of infill housing going in.”
He joked the suburb New Lynn was just two “really great coffee shops” short from earning a fresh title of “New Grey Lynn”.
Although he acknowledged that could be more down to him “trying to do creative marketing for his suburb” to push the property prices up.
“You move into an area because it’s more affordable, but as soon as you get a house there, you go, ‘I can’t wait for these prices to go up’,” he said.