Kilbirnie - a truly sunny character
This eastern suburb sports great community facilities and WCC has some big plans for its future.
KILBIRNIE was named after a town in Scotland when Europeans settled the Wellington version three kilometres southeast of the city in the mid-1800s. Streets such as Duncan Tce and Coutts St still reflect this Scottish association.
The area enjoys significantly more sun than suburbs like Island Bay, Kelburn and Wadestown, from eight hours a day on the shortest day to nearly 13 and three-quarter hours on the longest.
Kilbirnie also has some of the city’s sunniest prospects, having been earmarked for growth by the Wellington City Council as an employment and services hub for the southern and eastern suburbs.
This community of 3864 is also strategically located on the transport corridor between the airport and the central business district.
And it has one of Wellington’s best suburban shopping areas with big box retailers, several large supermarkets, cafes, ethnic restaurants, and village and speciality shops like The Children’s Bookstore.
Also unique to Kilbirnie is Wellington City’s only mosque while a Hindu temple serves as the headquarters for the Wellington Indian Association.
Schools, sports clubs and recreational facilities abound, including Wellington Region Aquatic Centre, Kilbirnie Park sports field, Kilbirnie Recreation Centre, the Wellington Regional Aquatic Centre and ASB Sports Centre.
The scope of Kilbirnie’s amenities, and its proximity to downtown, the airport and the eastern bays, makes it popular with owner-occupiers and investors alike.
Some of the more expensive houses are in Kilbirnie Heights – Duncan Tce, Upper Bourke St, Rodrigo Rd – while small original working cottages, villas and larger 1920/30s homes dominate the flat areas.
The range of homes also includes those built overlooking the village from the 1940s-1960s, apartment buildings and townhouses.
Dwellings with three bedrooms are the most common, accounting for nearly a third of the suburb’s 1650 dwellings, with two bedrooms being next most numerous (27 per cent).
The average sale price of a Kilbirnie property, based on the 20 sales registered in the past six months, is $730,260 and the median, $545,000. The discrepancy is because of a multi-unit investment property that sold for $1.56 million. Remove this sale and the average is closer to $514,000.
The most expensive house sale was a fourbedroom, home-and-income dwelling on a corner site with dual frontage in Crawford Rd, which was bought for $741,500.
The cheapest dwelling was a 1970s unit in Cockburn St, which sold for $260,000.
Over the same period, the median rent was $535 a week for a three-bedroom house and $330 a week for a two-bedroom flat.