this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland
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First of all, good for Auckland. I wish my city (whose metro area has about a million more people than the entirety of New Zealand) would have the courage do similar.
However, I gotta say I'm not a huge fan of the built form of the pictured examples, with five or six detached units in a row front-to-back on a single-family lot. It would make more sense to me to build more traditional quadplex apartment buildings (e.g. like this) instead.
I wonder if this is about expectations of buyers? I would say most people in NZ would consider a detached house as normal and desirable and a flat/apartment as less so. They may get more money selling four detached houses than a quadplex.
The desirability would be for a range of reasons, but a big one that comes to mind is ownership structure. The pictured houses could be freehold with a shared right of way for access. A quadplex introduces a need to have a body corporate or some structure for maintenance of the shared building, and likely limitations on what changes you can make without getting approval from all the other owners.
I think you're right.
Body corporates can be expensive and not having one is foolish. Even with townhouses I anecdotally know someone whose efforts to remediate their leaky house took many more years/dollars than it should have because the overseas owner of the abutting house kept refusing permission for things to do with their shared wall and roof section.
Yeah I feel like we don't have the model quite right. A body corporate at least moves you to only needing a majority vote (actually only 50% I believe).
But we could go further.
What if we could apply to the local council and if the request was reasonable they could approve the work to proceed, and require the other party to contribute if applicable?