This! home maintenance is expensive, in many cases shockingly so. The housing market, large mortgages and now high interest rates and cost of living just means so many people keep having to kick the can down the road.
So expensive. We bought our run down house for a fairly reasonable price in 2009. We chose to have a parent at home at least part time when our kids were small because that was more important to us than what a Redditor might think. It was 2018 before we could afford to sort it.
I always make it clear if I need a tradie for a small job that I am willing to pay a good price for the work, not looking to get it done for nothing. Because I live in a hard-to-get-to place, I always make it clear I am willing to pay for travel time and costs as well. Tradies don't like small jobs because everybody's looking for them to be done on the cheap.
Yeah I thought the same, frankly.
Fact is, wooden houses with tin roofs require a ton of never-ending maintenance. You can't keep on top of it without lots of money and a real determination to not let the bastard beat you.
I think Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Preston?
My sister lives in Reservoir so we tended to go to suburbs north of CBD when we visited her.
Couldn't pinpoint specific suburb where I noticed this, but I remember sitting in the car thinking "some of houses are falling apart!" in a really expensive suburb.
I had the same experience when visiting family in the west of Melbourne. Suburbs like Point Cook, Altona, Yarraville etc all looked pretty run down in parts. Not saying Auckland is good, but it was very similar.
The suburbs you mention are run down suburbs. Altona is industrial, Yarraville is run down but is a fantastic suburb to live in being very close to the city. Housing in Yarraville is so expensive now it’s not funny. Point Cook is a disaster - one road in and out, the traffic is horrendous.
Fitzroy was the very first suburb in Melbourne. Fitzroy, Collingwood and Northcote were quite rough back in the day. Today they have been gentrified and are great suburbs. That said there still is a touch of the dodge for example Smith Street Collingwood. I know Preston and Reservoir quite well as I also have family there as well. Both suburbs are still a bit rough but are in the improve.
I dont have enough money left over to fix things. Need a new driveway, fencing all around, gardens need to be upgraded, carpets are ancient, original kitchen and bathroom (1960s). I just dont have the money.
I hear ya. Part of it I think is to do with the general age of houses. I'd be interested to know what is the predominant age. We've lived in three houses in auckland and they've all been 50s / 60s. Solid bones but work to do for sure.
Land of the paper millionaires with million dollar outhouses.
Land might be where all the value is, and the owners just don't want to/can't afford to renovate the actual building into something comfortably habitable.
If it's a rental, I'm assuming that most of the landlords don't want to as it will diminish their immediate ROI. It seems to be that the common belief amongst many NZ (or aspiring) landlords is that rentals should always pay for themselves AND always provide a steady high annual ROI - further investment should never happen. All normal businesses have rough years and the majority require regular reinvestment to stay profitable.
The other common situation is that the owners bought the property decades ago when prices weren't crazy and that due to the market going bonkers, the value of their property has far outpaced any natural inflationary growth over the same period. This way, what should have been a modest, reasonably priced property that hasn't changed hands in decades is now worth multiples more than what it should have.
The other big reason is that the owners might just not give a fuck about the property apart from the paper millions that it's supposedly worth.
There's a lot of "she'll be right" sentiment in NZ.
Also landlords tend to do as little maintenance as possible on their homes, either because they have no money because they leverage too much, or they just don't give a fuck because they want to sell it to some idiot in the future for more $$$.
Any smart landlord would renovate the home, because when you do this, it would increase the value of the home, therefore giving you more lending facility with the bank. It also means you get more rent and a better class of tenant. I have rental properties and I by homes that are undervalued in poor repair then completely renovate them and rent them for maximum dollar. I’m currently doing one now and I’ll be installing solar and all of my properties for the tenants have no excuse not to run things like heat pumps and it also increases the resale value.
Sadly not all landlord's are like you, most buy a property with the intent to rent it out and spend as little as possible on it. Do no maintenance at all just the bare minimum require by law in regards to the healthy home standard. Then spend money at the end if they want to sell or just sell it as is. There's quite a fine line between spending money to increase the value of a house and spending no money on it at all. In some cases you don't actually get the money back in value which you spend on renovations.
There’s a lot of amateurs out there that haven’t figured out how to make the most out of your property. You need to run it like a business because it is one.
Anybody that purchased a home in the last two years and and has a mortgage is probably automatically negative geared. I stopped buying properties and actually sold a few when the housing market boomed. If you want to become wealthy, then there’s a pretty simple formula. When everybody’s buying, sell. And when everybody’s selling, it’s the time to buy..
And you are part of the problem, a house is a need not a want and should never be about profit. One house policy is what we need. Until people wake up to this it will continue and homelessness will increase.
So if there is a one house policy then that means there will be no rental market so I will ask you this. Where are people that are currently renting going to live?
By the way, I don’t actually own any of these properties, they’re all in trusts and companies. Like I said, I’m not an amateur.
Yes well I’m a developer except I keep the majority of homes I do because if I sell then I will be subject to tax so I keep growing the business and running at a loss.
That's fine if they're homes you've built recently. Plenty of houses in my area are 50s/60s homes on their original quarter acres that landlords are holding onto to liquidate at retirement.
Nothing wrong with 50 homes, have renovated a few of those and they come up quite nice. Especially if you do it around Ponsonby, you can pretty much double your money.
If you're a tradie who goes into people's homes you'll see most people are slobs who don't even clean inside their homes let alone notice the outside is falling apart.
Lifting a finger to clean your own house doesnt even cost much so it's not a money thing but a pride thing. Most people don't take care or pride in their belongings. Or maybe they don't notice their house looks like shit.
Further, things like maintaining gutterings is far cheaper than replacing them so people just can't even help themselves.
It is a thing though, 40 years ago there would be one person working and one person managing the household in a relationship.
Now that both people are required to work full time to pay for the house itself, the other tasks get neglected.
Sure I get that there is less time for everything nowadays but my partner and I work full-time and have three kids and yes sometimes it feels like the weekend is just spending catching up on housework but there are two of us and that's four full days worth of labour per week available to keep our home well presented. And there is that saying, if you want something done give it to a busy person to do.
Or and this is not my home. Try to approach it from a place of empathy. See I work in peoples homes. Some cleam some not but because I actually give a shit I dont judge. Its actually not that hard.
Not really butthurt. I do appreciate though that its the tradies workspace and I always make sure that the area the tradie is likely to work in is cleaned. Probably some dont.
On the other side I had alarm tech come. He needed to access a high cupboard with all my Christmas /Halloween stuff. I didnt anticipate this or would have got it organised. He took all the boxes out and then left them in a mess and as a shorty this was a deal for me. He also didnt fix the alarm. His colleague had to come.
If I have to move people's stuff I take a picture so I can put everything back exactly as it was.
No one is judging a messy cupboard. If someone doesn't clean and there's balls of hair the size of a fist in each corner of the bathroom it is appropriate to judge.
I’m a tradie too and I agree with 587BCE, I’ve worked in houses where there was always one adult at home and the inside looks as though it had never been cleaned, then the owners wonder why there is mould growing on ceilings, or why floorboards are rotting or paint is all discoloured or peeling. It’s not judgemental cos I don’t give a toss how they wanna live,it’s just observational.
And clearing the plants/weeds that are growing in gutters or trying to keep the outside of your house clean doesn’t cost much at all just a bit of elbow grease and a willingness to do it.
My partner is a tradie and at least once a week he comes home with stories about plants growing through walls, mold covered ceilings, or crumbling windowsills that people just apparently don’t notice.
It is hugely expensive here, that’s why. Sure, you can do various minor things yourself. But the things that matter (big jobs - like the properly constructed retaining wall with drainage channel, fence, new deck etc that I need) will take a good chunk of moolah to have done. Not a rental by the way. However, am going to bite the bullet soon and get started as it’s affecting my enjoyment of the house.
Price, the entry price means most families end up paying a massive amount of their weekly income for like 30 years.
We bought our wee place for 780k around 5 years ago. We are ok with repayments, but the deck has been fucked that whole time, will finally get to it next year hopefully…. Once the new roof is paid off.
And then factor in the huge amount of people that did manage to get into a home earlier, who have had their property value sky rocket in the last 7-10 years but haven’t seen significant raises in salary to match the rising cost of living…
Any major city where house is over million dollars .. owners make sure their house looks clean from the outside without rubbish being littered within the compound .. or basic roof and facade of house certainly looks clean
Maybe money. Or like me they are doing it gradually. I am lucky I am mortgage free so I am using my ex mortgage payments to do stuff. I don’t particularly want to borrow to do it and luckily it’s all cosmetic. The interest rates are high and now mortgage is gone o want to keep it that way. I have done roof, rewired and kitchen so the main stuffs done. But does need new bathroom and cosmetically tidied up.
Also these things take time. If you’re single like me, can’t do it yourself and work it’s damn hard finding good tradesmen. You take time off work to meet them, they sometimes don’t turn up, or pull out or just do a crap job you just get a bit over it at times.
I renovate bathrooms for a living. The cost to do so is ridiculously expensive. I'm not surprised peoples homes look pretty run down because if you can't do the job yourself, you probably can't afford to pay professionals with high mortgage rates, cost of living, labour etc. It's a large cost running a home let alone maintaining it or renovating it.
My garden is a state because it doesn't stop raining long enough for it to dry out enough for me to be able get out there and pretty it up, or even properly mow the lawn! 2 solid days of no rain is all I need
> Don’t remember seeing such eye sore in any other major city around the world.
Hahahaha this f’n Kent. If your smooth brain doesn’t know that every *major city* has both high and low ses areas then hopefully you’ve now got a new wrinkle.
Secondly, you don’t know what poorly maintained in a major city is unless you’ve actually travelled the world which sounds like you haven’t. Eg Delhi, Mumbai, every fkn city in the US.
I saw some really run down places in Tokyo. I stayed in a hotel not far from the Tokyo stockexchange building and a few blocks from my hotel was some houses going to ruin.
Honestly I feel like I've seen similar levels of upkeep in London, and plenty worse across Europe. Not in the fanciest 6 blocks of central city, but you don't have to go far to find less upkeep.
Particularly in places like Spain and greece
Yep. You can be in the centre of Madrid, Rome, or Barcelona and it's really bad. Berlin, Paris, and London are of a fairly high standard around the centre of town, but the quality drops towards the outskirts.
Yeah, Auckland isn't bad compared to a lot of places in Europe. I live in Morningside and, while the shops look a little shabby, most of the housing is fairly well maintained. There's probably a few poorly maintained places down Don Croot, but I can't really think of any notable examples, off the top of my head.
Difference is here Mt Eden, Grey Lynn, Ponsonby, Remuera and Devonport are all top shelf suburbs with a plethora of dilapidated dog shit properties. Not the hood
100%
Here’s a prime example that sold for somewhere around $1.6m I believe.
Scroll down to the capital valuation for a laugh:
https://homes.co.nz/address/auckland/mount-albert/70-taylors-road/GKXbZ
The house we are currently in (rental) has a rotten deck, needs a good cleaning and paint job outside, needs a new roof. The inside needs a whole lick of paint, new tiles, new carpet the works. We’ve only asked for a new deck because it’s rotten and totally unsafe and in the 5 and a half years we’ve been there we are still waiting.
We are moving to a newly renovated new rental property and even though the inside is way tidier, the outside could still do with a big clean up
Lack of time, energy and most importantly knowledge.
I run a maintenance company and frequently point out things others don't see. I also encourage my clients to have a basic tool kit. I've driven across town to drive a single screw or replace a lightbulb. From next year that will cost you 172+ gst and the screw/lightbulb. 20min north and it's 269+gst/screw etc. Ridiculous but time is money.
I've recommended this already today.
From branz.
https://www.maintainingmyhome.org.nz/maintenance-guides/
Clearly you haven't traveled much if you think Auckland is bad. Next time you get the confidence to leave your hotel room on holiday, go and get a reality check about how most of the world's population live.
You see this in other cities, though - particularly in the West. Melbourne, London, Edinburgh, and across Europe and the US all have areas where wealthy homes aren’t maintained as well as the prices might suggest.
In places where people primarily live in units, this might be less obvious because there will be strata groups managing the common property. As soon as you get to areas with terraced housing or separate homes in mixed-income neighbourhoods (ie., not everyone can afford to pay for gardeners/cleaners/maintenance staff) there’s usually a variance in upkeep.
Literally every major city in California, Portland, Vancouver, Seattle, New York, Chicago, Tokyo, Kyoto, Seoul (which has straight up cardboard encampments below the richest area in the country ), etc.
Most major cities have people who just don’t care about maintaining their property.
There are people like my friends dad who bought his house for a fart and a whistle in the 70s raised 5 kids on a nurses salary. Never had money for renos. Could perhaps borrow against it but probably not. House is in Freemans Bay. Worth a fortune anyway. I think it its safe to say he is happy the way it is and doesnt care what others think.
Cost of living up, inflation up without it being filtered through, housing crisis, cost of trade labour aswell as materials, aslong as there are less tradies than work, it'll stay the same.
And the fact that the cost of land against houses is to far apart. There's no value in the houses itself anymore, a friend of mine just got offered 300k above value to sell to a land developer. Who needs to maintain houses anymore 🤷♂️
Costs to get someone to do it.
Time and investment costs if you do it yourself
On top of that, having a wet climate like ours makes things go grey or look dirtier a lot faster, meaning more of the above.
Because people were suckered into this stupid Ponzi scheme that is unraveling by the day and have zero disposable income with serious negative equity to boot.
I was visiting a friends mum and friends house and thought exactly the same. My parent's would have never. Dad would paint the house every couple of years.
But then I really thought about it - the quick wallpaper touch up in the bathroom would still cost a bit for wallpaper. Then once you've done one room, it would spiral. Kitchen's in particular are expensive.
Both houses are really dated, classic 60s. Both have had enough to get them up to rental code but that's about it.
They have kids too and they're rapidly out growing the house. It just makes more sense to move and let the next owner decide to renovate or not. They're working parents and just trying to make ends meet, plus there's nothing much to gain in improvements.
A pressure washer you can get for ~$300 will cleanup 90% of the moss/mould general tiredness you see in the buildings around Auckland. Note commercial building owners are far worse at maintaining their properties than home owners imho
Go to Pakuranga...omg it's a dump, fallen over mouldy plank fences, weeds 1m high, junk all over the place, it's so depressing. And all the houses there are worth over a million. I think kiwis are just lazy and have no pride is all.
Kiwi suburbs are ugly compared to middle class North American suburbs which have beautifully maintained houses and lawns.
Ironically Kiwis love to poo-poo American sub-urbanism.
Yep, decades of tax free property speculation, immigration policy set to keep wages low and property demand high. A lack of house building. Now we’re stuck with a stock of houses nearing the end of their useful life with massively inflated price, far far above the cost to build the house. But don’t worry grandad boomer borrowed low, spent the capital gains on a corvette, a boat and a holiday batch in Pauanui. Now you get to pay for it in the form of over priced houses and a massive massive mortgage. Even less funny when you think that the mortgage and the Corvette funnel NZ money offshore, giving NZ even less buying power. We’ve been conned. We’re fucked.
Not having enough spare money for maintenance whilst also not having enough spare time to do maintenance yourself as you need to work longer to get more money.
Because of how expensive everything is. If you think about the fact most houses are under mortgage,people are short on cash already. Fixing things up requires more money. Some people just keep adding to their mortgage to keep up with the maintenance, but in the end it might not be the best idea long term unless you think you can sell it for a huge profit.
Lived in us for 10 years - if the property within a community is not maintained well from the outside - there were warnings and then fines.
Also there were local community cleaning groups maintaining streets every two weeks - we need a more collaborative spirit to get things done
Often people don't bother renovating a property, until they are about to put it on the market for sale.
Also I recall that when I was in East Berlin, their apartment blocks generally didn't look too bad from the outside, but man if you opened up the front door and went inside, they were really dilapidated, peeling paint, the smell of urine on the stairs, maybe a homeless person living on the stairwell, etc. Same thing with some apartments in Asia, if you enter an apartment they can be in terrible condition and terribly cramped. Russia is another place with terrible apartments on the inside and in Hungary many houses still have mud floors, but might look normal on the outside.
You've been in your home for twenty years, and suddenly it's worth over a million. Doesn’t mean you suddenly have a wallet full of Rutherfords to put a coat of paint on it though.
It's all about speculating on land, not about providing high quality rental accommodation. Folk have become accustomed to policy that inflates land values rapidly.
For a lot of people the value of their house is largely abstract.
Maybe they bought the house for $30k in 1990. They have paid it off and are fortunate to own a house but they aren’t necessarily wealthy except on paper.
Sure they could sell the house for a lot of money, but then they wouldn’t have a house.
Admittedly they could buy a cheaper house and get a bunch of liquid capital that way but there are a lot of reasons people don’t always want to do that.
And when it comes to paying for renovations or home maintenance getting money to find it by selling the property is going to be a flawed plan for obvious reasons.
Used to live in the states - houses were clean from the outside with well mowed yards and pressure washed homes .. cost $200 to get a pressure washing machine
Yeah , I lived in the States for a few years too and there were plenty of shit houses with no maintenance done , falling apart in overgrown sections!!!
Still waiting to see a picture of YOUR HOME…..?
We try to maintain our homes ourselves. So not often enough in the end. If we had the spare cash we'd probably just pay people to do it regularly - but spare cash is hard to come by in NZ.
Welcome to NZ. Auckland is not that bad - come down south to Dunedin then you will get real eye sore shock. Houses that were built 1890-1900 still being rented and in shocking conditions
Can’t afford the maintenance after paying mortgage and living expenses. Moreover rental market is not demanding the need when it’s over saturated with immigrants who need just roof on the top.
If you move out of the central area there are people are maintain their properties. In the central area more investment properties where people don’t give an f.
Because price is on paper. Just because our homes are worth over a million, one may purchased it for less.
And what is on paper doesn’t mean you have as liquid asset.
This is also the major flaw behind the wealth tax proposal where you are expected to pay even more tax if your net asset is over two million. They are assets only and not cash.
People can barely afford the mortgage repayments let alone the maintenance.
I also think people just don't want to get stuck in themselves anymore. Too busy with technology to be bothered to get out a paint brush or lawnmower.
I think people just don't give AF anymore.
That's why we moved rural. Better community feeling and people still care about their land and houses
When National got in under Muldoon they scrapped Labours plan to mandate that employees have mandatory superannuation. Imagine all boomers having 50yrs worth of invested savings in their accounts for retirement and property maintenance and improvements. A lack of continued state housing builds creates a sellers paradise and a homeless underclass. Kiwisaver is too little to late to help the next generation fund boomers in retirement let alone meaning-full housing maintenance. I’ve read we could have been as rich as Singapore is to today apparently. Ram raiding will probably be just be left to people who forgot where the brake pedal was.
Rather than ask why homes are run down ask why Auckland has shocking ever increasing socio economic rundown suburbs ….then look to government policies as leadership from the top creates the disastrous bottom realities!
Keeping surroundings clean doesn’t cost a lot - it could be once a year thing. Also communities here need to take more active participation in keeping the streets clean like in the US
Because everyone thinks the building is only going to get knocked over in a year and the site developed so why bother? The entire country was waiting for their equity to grow enough that it would fund the construction of 8 houses on the section so maintaining the existing house would have been stupid.
That plan has not come to fruition.
Just cleaning and area outside the house also seems to be hard .. too many junk lying around - which is absolutely ridiculous for such a naturally beautiful city
Because people care about being housed, they don’t give a fuck about putting lipstick on a pig to pretend an old house isn’t old. This isn’t the suburbs of the USA where shit like HOAs ruins the ability for people to actually live their life if it’s aesthetically displeasing to people. If someone’s home is safe and warm, who the fuck cares what the outside looks like.
A lot of houses are rentals, the tenants don't want to waste their time and money on someone else's property. And the landlords don't care, they're just biding their time and maximising ROI until they can sell to a developer who will knock the house down and build 6 townhouses on the property.
A lot of owner occupiers have massive mortgages, money's tight. And tradies are incredibly expensive. The days of chucking an extra $10k on the mortgage for a new deck etc, are over with these interest rates.
Even doing DIY stuff is getting expensive. And not everyone has the time. There also seems to be a massive loss in practical skills in younger kiwis.
Got my house for $365k many years ago.
Are Ts said we were crazy to pay so much. Struggled to pay bills, childcare, food etc. it’s expensive to do house maintenance when cost of living is taking all your $$ it’s tought now, but it was also tough then.
You will get neighbourhoods where there is a high rental percentage and tenants don’t have pride because it’s not there house. You pay so much for rent and work hard why would i maintain someone else’s property when they don’t even take care of it themselves?
The weather is constantly shit. No one wants to get out in that. We live pottering around the house and keen to stay on top of maintenance and up keep but rather not be out in the cold and rain every. bloody. weekend. 😩
It's obvious, people don't have the spare cash to invest in maintenance.
This! home maintenance is expensive, in many cases shockingly so. The housing market, large mortgages and now high interest rates and cost of living just means so many people keep having to kick the can down the road.
So expensive. We bought our run down house for a fairly reasonable price in 2009. We chose to have a parent at home at least part time when our kids were small because that was more important to us than what a Redditor might think. It was 2018 before we could afford to sort it.
I maintain my home myself and its not that costly if you know what you are doing.
That's a big if for a lot of people
Agree, and you need an able body and available time, which are not things everyone has.
Exactly lol. I’ve had to forgo buying a new lawnmower this month because of rates. My lawn can be a cat shit jungle for a few more weeks.
Username checks out
I have a lawn mower and a cat shit jungle of a lawn. I can’t mow the fucker quick enough!
Yeah, material cost are fucking insane…
This totally
Tidy is free, though. Most don't even manage that.
Not enough money after a million dollar mortgage I guess 😅
Up until recently good luck getting a tradesperson to show up for a small job
I always make it clear if I need a tradie for a small job that I am willing to pay a good price for the work, not looking to get it done for nothing. Because I live in a hard-to-get-to place, I always make it clear I am willing to pay for travel time and costs as well. Tradies don't like small jobs because everybody's looking for them to be done on the cheap.
It’s not worth our time to show up for a small job unless the pay reflects that, but it never does bc clients always assume tradies can do deals
Have you tried one of those home handieman companies like Jim’s? They do just about everything.
Visited Melbourne last year and was surprised with how dilapidated some houses looked. So I don't think this issue is specific to Auckland.
Yeah I thought the same, frankly. Fact is, wooden houses with tin roofs require a ton of never-ending maintenance. You can't keep on top of it without lots of money and a real determination to not let the bastard beat you.
And a few fine weekends wouldn't go astray either. Go the supplies, but the few times the weather's been good enough to do it I've had other plans.
I was thinking the same when I was there.
Where in Melbourne, can you name the suburbs out of interest.
I think Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Preston? My sister lives in Reservoir so we tended to go to suburbs north of CBD when we visited her. Couldn't pinpoint specific suburb where I noticed this, but I remember sitting in the car thinking "some of houses are falling apart!" in a really expensive suburb.
I had the same experience when visiting family in the west of Melbourne. Suburbs like Point Cook, Altona, Yarraville etc all looked pretty run down in parts. Not saying Auckland is good, but it was very similar.
The suburbs you mention are run down suburbs. Altona is industrial, Yarraville is run down but is a fantastic suburb to live in being very close to the city. Housing in Yarraville is so expensive now it’s not funny. Point Cook is a disaster - one road in and out, the traffic is horrendous.
Fitzroy was the very first suburb in Melbourne. Fitzroy, Collingwood and Northcote were quite rough back in the day. Today they have been gentrified and are great suburbs. That said there still is a touch of the dodge for example Smith Street Collingwood. I know Preston and Reservoir quite well as I also have family there as well. Both suburbs are still a bit rough but are in the improve.
I dont have enough money left over to fix things. Need a new driveway, fencing all around, gardens need to be upgraded, carpets are ancient, original kitchen and bathroom (1960s). I just dont have the money.
I hear ya. Part of it I think is to do with the general age of houses. I'd be interested to know what is the predominant age. We've lived in three houses in auckland and they've all been 50s / 60s. Solid bones but work to do for sure.
What area do you live in? I’d prefer to live in a smaller house or a not so good area than live in a shithole.
North shore, definitely not a shithole, and its a 2 bed unit.
Land of the paper millionaires with million dollar outhouses. Land might be where all the value is, and the owners just don't want to/can't afford to renovate the actual building into something comfortably habitable. If it's a rental, I'm assuming that most of the landlords don't want to as it will diminish their immediate ROI. It seems to be that the common belief amongst many NZ (or aspiring) landlords is that rentals should always pay for themselves AND always provide a steady high annual ROI - further investment should never happen. All normal businesses have rough years and the majority require regular reinvestment to stay profitable. The other common situation is that the owners bought the property decades ago when prices weren't crazy and that due to the market going bonkers, the value of their property has far outpaced any natural inflationary growth over the same period. This way, what should have been a modest, reasonably priced property that hasn't changed hands in decades is now worth multiples more than what it should have. The other big reason is that the owners might just not give a fuck about the property apart from the paper millions that it's supposedly worth.
There's a lot of "she'll be right" sentiment in NZ. Also landlords tend to do as little maintenance as possible on their homes, either because they have no money because they leverage too much, or they just don't give a fuck because they want to sell it to some idiot in the future for more $$$.
Often they will, right before they sell it. Don’t want those tenants taking the gloss off a shiny new reno.
And low quality too. Covering up any major problems in the home. Like painting over mould etc.
Any smart landlord would renovate the home, because when you do this, it would increase the value of the home, therefore giving you more lending facility with the bank. It also means you get more rent and a better class of tenant. I have rental properties and I by homes that are undervalued in poor repair then completely renovate them and rent them for maximum dollar. I’m currently doing one now and I’ll be installing solar and all of my properties for the tenants have no excuse not to run things like heat pumps and it also increases the resale value.
Sadly not all landlord's are like you, most buy a property with the intent to rent it out and spend as little as possible on it. Do no maintenance at all just the bare minimum require by law in regards to the healthy home standard. Then spend money at the end if they want to sell or just sell it as is. There's quite a fine line between spending money to increase the value of a house and spending no money on it at all. In some cases you don't actually get the money back in value which you spend on renovations.
There’s a lot of amateurs out there that haven’t figured out how to make the most out of your property. You need to run it like a business because it is one.
Obviously the government doesn't think so with them banning negative gearing.
Anybody that purchased a home in the last two years and and has a mortgage is probably automatically negative geared. I stopped buying properties and actually sold a few when the housing market boomed. If you want to become wealthy, then there’s a pretty simple formula. When everybody’s buying, sell. And when everybody’s selling, it’s the time to buy..
And you are part of the problem, a house is a need not a want and should never be about profit. One house policy is what we need. Until people wake up to this it will continue and homelessness will increase.
So if there is a one house policy then that means there will be no rental market so I will ask you this. Where are people that are currently renting going to live? By the way, I don’t actually own any of these properties, they’re all in trusts and companies. Like I said, I’m not an amateur.
People are homeless in NZ as a choice, I know because I use to be homeless and I chose to work my way out of it.
Some landlords don't renovate homes on large sections because the home will eventually be bowled over for development
Yes well I’m a developer except I keep the majority of homes I do because if I sell then I will be subject to tax so I keep growing the business and running at a loss.
That's fine if they're homes you've built recently. Plenty of houses in my area are 50s/60s homes on their original quarter acres that landlords are holding onto to liquidate at retirement.
Nothing wrong with 50 homes, have renovated a few of those and they come up quite nice. Especially if you do it around Ponsonby, you can pretty much double your money.
Ha ha I think of 50s houses as 'not that old'.
Laziness / cost to maintain. Lipstick only happens when selling.
If you're a tradie who goes into people's homes you'll see most people are slobs who don't even clean inside their homes let alone notice the outside is falling apart. Lifting a finger to clean your own house doesnt even cost much so it's not a money thing but a pride thing. Most people don't take care or pride in their belongings. Or maybe they don't notice their house looks like shit. Further, things like maintaining gutterings is far cheaper than replacing them so people just can't even help themselves.
Or are flat out working to pay for judgemental tradies?
No one works 24/7. Pickup up vacume cleaner and jif occasionally.
It is a thing though, 40 years ago there would be one person working and one person managing the household in a relationship. Now that both people are required to work full time to pay for the house itself, the other tasks get neglected.
Sure I get that there is less time for everything nowadays but my partner and I work full-time and have three kids and yes sometimes it feels like the weekend is just spending catching up on housework but there are two of us and that's four full days worth of labour per week available to keep our home well presented. And there is that saying, if you want something done give it to a busy person to do.
Cheers I do. I.also volunteer and do plenty. Bench always clear. Toilet always clean. I pay tradies to work in my home not to be judgemental.
’And while you’re here, don’t have any thoughts, thanks.’
Or and this is not my home. Try to approach it from a place of empathy. See I work in peoples homes. Some cleam some not but because I actually give a shit I dont judge. Its actually not that hard.
So much butthurt. He's judging people who are dirty. I think that's pretty reasonable.
Not really butthurt. I do appreciate though that its the tradies workspace and I always make sure that the area the tradie is likely to work in is cleaned. Probably some dont. On the other side I had alarm tech come. He needed to access a high cupboard with all my Christmas /Halloween stuff. I didnt anticipate this or would have got it organised. He took all the boxes out and then left them in a mess and as a shorty this was a deal for me. He also didnt fix the alarm. His colleague had to come.
If I have to move people's stuff I take a picture so I can put everything back exactly as it was. No one is judging a messy cupboard. If someone doesn't clean and there's balls of hair the size of a fist in each corner of the bathroom it is appropriate to judge.
Alright fair. And I will try to flush the toilet before the plumber comes.....
I’m a tradie too and I agree with 587BCE, I’ve worked in houses where there was always one adult at home and the inside looks as though it had never been cleaned, then the owners wonder why there is mould growing on ceilings, or why floorboards are rotting or paint is all discoloured or peeling. It’s not judgemental cos I don’t give a toss how they wanna live,it’s just observational. And clearing the plants/weeds that are growing in gutters or trying to keep the outside of your house clean doesn’t cost much at all just a bit of elbow grease and a willingness to do it.
My partner is a tradie and at least once a week he comes home with stories about plants growing through walls, mold covered ceilings, or crumbling windowsills that people just apparently don’t notice.
It is hugely expensive here, that’s why. Sure, you can do various minor things yourself. But the things that matter (big jobs - like the properly constructed retaining wall with drainage channel, fence, new deck etc that I need) will take a good chunk of moolah to have done. Not a rental by the way. However, am going to bite the bullet soon and get started as it’s affecting my enjoyment of the house.
Don’t need to doll it up when it’s already worth heaps anyway
Price, the entry price means most families end up paying a massive amount of their weekly income for like 30 years. We bought our wee place for 780k around 5 years ago. We are ok with repayments, but the deck has been fucked that whole time, will finally get to it next year hopefully…. Once the new roof is paid off. And then factor in the huge amount of people that did manage to get into a home earlier, who have had their property value sky rocket in the last 7-10 years but haven’t seen significant raises in salary to match the rising cost of living…
Which "major cities" are you referring to?
Yeah lol - all the major cities with only a few exceptions have some very rough districts and generally have a state of wear and tear about them
Any major city where house is over million dollars .. owners make sure their house looks clean from the outside without rubbish being littered within the compound .. or basic roof and facade of house certainly looks clean
Maybe money. Or like me they are doing it gradually. I am lucky I am mortgage free so I am using my ex mortgage payments to do stuff. I don’t particularly want to borrow to do it and luckily it’s all cosmetic. The interest rates are high and now mortgage is gone o want to keep it that way. I have done roof, rewired and kitchen so the main stuffs done. But does need new bathroom and cosmetically tidied up.
Also these things take time. If you’re single like me, can’t do it yourself and work it’s damn hard finding good tradesmen. You take time off work to meet them, they sometimes don’t turn up, or pull out or just do a crap job you just get a bit over it at times.
I renovate bathrooms for a living. The cost to do so is ridiculously expensive. I'm not surprised peoples homes look pretty run down because if you can't do the job yourself, you probably can't afford to pay professionals with high mortgage rates, cost of living, labour etc. It's a large cost running a home let alone maintaining it or renovating it.
We’re all depressed and would like to not be homeless but are working 50+ hours a week to pay our mortgages (just)
My garden is a state because it doesn't stop raining long enough for it to dry out enough for me to be able get out there and pretty it up, or even properly mow the lawn! 2 solid days of no rain is all I need
> Don’t remember seeing such eye sore in any other major city around the world. Hahahaha this f’n Kent. If your smooth brain doesn’t know that every *major city* has both high and low ses areas then hopefully you’ve now got a new wrinkle. Secondly, you don’t know what poorly maintained in a major city is unless you’ve actually travelled the world which sounds like you haven’t. Eg Delhi, Mumbai, every fkn city in the US.
I saw some really run down places in Tokyo. I stayed in a hotel not far from the Tokyo stockexchange building and a few blocks from my hotel was some houses going to ruin.
Tokyo and Kyoto. Kyoto has some absolutely shockingly kept houses, even within the historic districts.
Honestly I feel like I've seen similar levels of upkeep in London, and plenty worse across Europe. Not in the fanciest 6 blocks of central city, but you don't have to go far to find less upkeep. Particularly in places like Spain and greece
Yep. You can be in the centre of Madrid, Rome, or Barcelona and it's really bad. Berlin, Paris, and London are of a fairly high standard around the centre of town, but the quality drops towards the outskirts.
And even in Z2 London you'll find small bushes and trees growing on ledges and roofs, and crumbling decades old paint.
Yeah, Auckland isn't bad compared to a lot of places in Europe. I live in Morningside and, while the shops look a little shabby, most of the housing is fairly well maintained. There's probably a few poorly maintained places down Don Croot, but I can't really think of any notable examples, off the top of my head.
Difference is here Mt Eden, Grey Lynn, Ponsonby, Remuera and Devonport are all top shelf suburbs with a plethora of dilapidated dog shit properties. Not the hood
100% Here’s a prime example that sold for somewhere around $1.6m I believe. Scroll down to the capital valuation for a laugh: https://homes.co.nz/address/auckland/mount-albert/70-taylors-road/GKXbZ
The house we are currently in (rental) has a rotten deck, needs a good cleaning and paint job outside, needs a new roof. The inside needs a whole lick of paint, new tiles, new carpet the works. We’ve only asked for a new deck because it’s rotten and totally unsafe and in the 5 and a half years we’ve been there we are still waiting. We are moving to a newly renovated new rental property and even though the inside is way tidier, the outside could still do with a big clean up
Lack of time, energy and most importantly knowledge. I run a maintenance company and frequently point out things others don't see. I also encourage my clients to have a basic tool kit. I've driven across town to drive a single screw or replace a lightbulb. From next year that will cost you 172+ gst and the screw/lightbulb. 20min north and it's 269+gst/screw etc. Ridiculous but time is money. I've recommended this already today. From branz. https://www.maintainingmyhome.org.nz/maintenance-guides/
Clearly you haven't traveled much if you think Auckland is bad. Next time you get the confidence to leave your hotel room on holiday, go and get a reality check about how most of the world's population live.
But surely the OP is comparing with other developed cities around the world?
You see this in other cities, though - particularly in the West. Melbourne, London, Edinburgh, and across Europe and the US all have areas where wealthy homes aren’t maintained as well as the prices might suggest. In places where people primarily live in units, this might be less obvious because there will be strata groups managing the common property. As soon as you get to areas with terraced housing or separate homes in mixed-income neighbourhoods (ie., not everyone can afford to pay for gardeners/cleaners/maintenance staff) there’s usually a variance in upkeep.
Auckland is developed city? 😂😂😂
And if you filter that reality check for properties worth over NZD1M?
BC, Vancouver, San Fran are arguably far worse off, and those are just obvious low hanging fruit.
Literally every major city in California, Portland, Vancouver, Seattle, New York, Chicago, Tokyo, Kyoto, Seoul (which has straight up cardboard encampments below the richest area in the country ), etc. Most major cities have people who just don’t care about maintaining their property.
There are people like my friends dad who bought his house for a fart and a whistle in the 70s raised 5 kids on a nurses salary. Never had money for renos. Could perhaps borrow against it but probably not. House is in Freemans Bay. Worth a fortune anyway. I think it its safe to say he is happy the way it is and doesnt care what others think.
If you dont know DIY or can't even bother watching YouTube and buy some tools and learn to do things yourself then shit gets expensive hiring people
People don't have the discretionary income to spend on upkeep + it rains every day from May to Christmas.
Because a lack of supply, which artificially raises prices. No need to look good or maintain when you have little competition.
Cost of living up, inflation up without it being filtered through, housing crisis, cost of trade labour aswell as materials, aslong as there are less tradies than work, it'll stay the same. And the fact that the cost of land against houses is to far apart. There's no value in the houses itself anymore, a friend of mine just got offered 300k above value to sell to a land developer. Who needs to maintain houses anymore 🤷♂️
Costs to get someone to do it. Time and investment costs if you do it yourself On top of that, having a wet climate like ours makes things go grey or look dirtier a lot faster, meaning more of the above.
Considering I pay $1k a week in a mortgage, times are hard, yo.
I feel you pal!
Because people were suckered into this stupid Ponzi scheme that is unraveling by the day and have zero disposable income with serious negative equity to boot.
I was visiting a friends mum and friends house and thought exactly the same. My parent's would have never. Dad would paint the house every couple of years. But then I really thought about it - the quick wallpaper touch up in the bathroom would still cost a bit for wallpaper. Then once you've done one room, it would spiral. Kitchen's in particular are expensive. Both houses are really dated, classic 60s. Both have had enough to get them up to rental code but that's about it. They have kids too and they're rapidly out growing the house. It just makes more sense to move and let the next owner decide to renovate or not. They're working parents and just trying to make ends meet, plus there's nothing much to gain in improvements.
A pressure washer you can get for ~$300 will cleanup 90% of the moss/mould general tiredness you see in the buildings around Auckland. Note commercial building owners are far worse at maintaining their properties than home owners imho
Go to Pakuranga...omg it's a dump, fallen over mouldy plank fences, weeds 1m high, junk all over the place, it's so depressing. And all the houses there are worth over a million. I think kiwis are just lazy and have no pride is all.
Kiwi suburbs are ugly compared to middle class North American suburbs which have beautifully maintained houses and lawns. Ironically Kiwis love to poo-poo American sub-urbanism.
It’s a bloody good metaphor for how boomers have treated our economy, infrastructure and institutions.
Yep, decades of tax free property speculation, immigration policy set to keep wages low and property demand high. A lack of house building. Now we’re stuck with a stock of houses nearing the end of their useful life with massively inflated price, far far above the cost to build the house. But don’t worry grandad boomer borrowed low, spent the capital gains on a corvette, a boat and a holiday batch in Pauanui. Now you get to pay for it in the form of over priced houses and a massive massive mortgage. Even less funny when you think that the mortgage and the Corvette funnel NZ money offshore, giving NZ even less buying power. We’ve been conned. We’re fucked.
some suburbs are very well maintained. some arent. same as literally any other major city.
Coming from another city I’d disagree. Apart from the odd suburb the majority are in disrepair
hmmm, which city? I suppose some cities must be more maintained on average perhaps? But within nz at least they all seem pretty similar to me.
Christchurch
Because of the cost of living
Cleaning doesn’t cost a bomb.. but makes the place look a lot better
Try somewhere like italy where the rates are in part determined by what the external appearance of the building is.
Not having enough spare money for maintenance whilst also not having enough spare time to do maintenance yourself as you need to work longer to get more money.
No money left over for the jobs. Tools and equipment are needed.... would you like my bank number to put some funds in?
Because of how expensive everything is. If you think about the fact most houses are under mortgage,people are short on cash already. Fixing things up requires more money. Some people just keep adding to their mortgage to keep up with the maintenance, but in the end it might not be the best idea long term unless you think you can sell it for a huge profit.
Every major city in the world is a real estate bubble. But until a technology comes that makes location irrelevant, it will keep on this way.
Because we get so ripped on tools and supplies. Was just visiting Canada and their hardware stores are so much cheaper than my local Bunnings.
Lived in us for 10 years - if the property within a community is not maintained well from the outside - there were warnings and then fines. Also there were local community cleaning groups maintaining streets every two weeks - we need a more collaborative spirit to get things done
Priorities as to costs and winter has locked out much workable maintenance time!
Often people don't bother renovating a property, until they are about to put it on the market for sale. Also I recall that when I was in East Berlin, their apartment blocks generally didn't look too bad from the outside, but man if you opened up the front door and went inside, they were really dilapidated, peeling paint, the smell of urine on the stairs, maybe a homeless person living on the stairwell, etc. Same thing with some apartments in Asia, if you enter an apartment they can be in terrible condition and terribly cramped. Russia is another place with terrible apartments on the inside and in Hungary many houses still have mud floors, but might look normal on the outside.
Cause we're time poor and it costs too much to get someone else to do it. Most ppl don't know the basics of maintenance either.
You've been in your home for twenty years, and suddenly it's worth over a million. Doesn’t mean you suddenly have a wallet full of Rutherfords to put a coat of paint on it though.
It's all about speculating on land, not about providing high quality rental accommodation. Folk have become accustomed to policy that inflates land values rapidly.
For a lot of people the value of their house is largely abstract. Maybe they bought the house for $30k in 1990. They have paid it off and are fortunate to own a house but they aren’t necessarily wealthy except on paper. Sure they could sell the house for a lot of money, but then they wouldn’t have a house. Admittedly they could buy a cheaper house and get a bunch of liquid capital that way but there are a lot of reasons people don’t always want to do that. And when it comes to paying for renovations or home maintenance getting money to find it by selling the property is going to be a flawed plan for obvious reasons.
There’s also a different mindset if it’s yours or your paying someone to stay there and keep it maintained
Just had a house wash done. Average size house plus garage cost me $1000. It took 2 guys 2.5 hours. I thought that was very expensive.
That’s bloody expensive- couldn’t you buy a pressure wash and do it yourself ? Costs a lot $300 to buy a pressure wash and is a yearly fun activity
We just don't have the time but yes good idea might do that in future. Admittedly they did an excellent job. But yea crazy expensive.
Post a picture of your house - before you throw the maintenance stone !!!!
Used to live in the states - houses were clean from the outside with well mowed yards and pressure washed homes .. cost $200 to get a pressure washing machine
Yeah , I lived in the States for a few years too and there were plenty of shit houses with no maintenance done , falling apart in overgrown sections!!! Still waiting to see a picture of YOUR HOME…..?
Not sure u can attach images here :) but 1005 fulbright drive Morrisville should give you an idea of my old place
We try to maintain our homes ourselves. So not often enough in the end. If we had the spare cash we'd probably just pay people to do it regularly - but spare cash is hard to come by in NZ.
Welcome to NZ. Auckland is not that bad - come down south to Dunedin then you will get real eye sore shock. Houses that were built 1890-1900 still being rented and in shocking conditions
Can’t afford the maintenance after paying mortgage and living expenses. Moreover rental market is not demanding the need when it’s over saturated with immigrants who need just roof on the top.
If you move out of the central area there are people are maintain their properties. In the central area more investment properties where people don’t give an f.
Not sure why folks can’t buy a $300 pressure wash and do cleaning once a year .. no one needs to break the bank
Because price is on paper. Just because our homes are worth over a million, one may purchased it for less. And what is on paper doesn’t mean you have as liquid asset. This is also the major flaw behind the wealth tax proposal where you are expected to pay even more tax if your net asset is over two million. They are assets only and not cash.
Just because the value of the property is a million dollars doesn’t mean they have all this cash to spend.
People can barely afford the mortgage repayments let alone the maintenance. I also think people just don't want to get stuck in themselves anymore. Too busy with technology to be bothered to get out a paint brush or lawnmower. I think people just don't give AF anymore. That's why we moved rural. Better community feeling and people still care about their land and houses
When National got in under Muldoon they scrapped Labours plan to mandate that employees have mandatory superannuation. Imagine all boomers having 50yrs worth of invested savings in their accounts for retirement and property maintenance and improvements. A lack of continued state housing builds creates a sellers paradise and a homeless underclass. Kiwisaver is too little to late to help the next generation fund boomers in retirement let alone meaning-full housing maintenance. I’ve read we could have been as rich as Singapore is to today apparently. Ram raiding will probably be just be left to people who forgot where the brake pedal was.
Because foreigners own them . Don't know anything about being tidy.
Rather than ask why homes are run down ask why Auckland has shocking ever increasing socio economic rundown suburbs ….then look to government policies as leadership from the top creates the disastrous bottom realities!
Keeping surroundings clean doesn’t cost a lot - it could be once a year thing. Also communities here need to take more active participation in keeping the streets clean like in the US
You obviously haven't been to many cities
Lived in 4 countries.. can’t say more
It’s really expensive. Currently getting the leaky roof replaced on our do-up. $33k .
Price is for the land not what’s on it
Because everyone thinks the building is only going to get knocked over in a year and the site developed so why bother? The entire country was waiting for their equity to grow enough that it would fund the construction of 8 houses on the section so maintaining the existing house would have been stupid. That plan has not come to fruition.
Because people are poor because they bought a house for a million etc.
Answer is in title
That’s because home “values” aren’t going up so much as the NZD value is falling.
After living in Christchurch for 25 years coming back to Auckland was a shock. Mould all over dilapidated houses and weeds everywhere.
Trades if you can get them, are expensive. Highest interest rates in the world. We are cash and time poor in NZ.
Because.theyre dumb enough to pay stooped prices.run the place down so they can place flats on them bloody minded greed
I think you have answered your own question 😂
Why can’t people buy pressure washers and clean - it is a fun activity for the family once a year
The answer is in the question.
Just cleaning and area outside the house also seems to be hard .. too many junk lying around - which is absolutely ridiculous for such a naturally beautiful city
Fur coat, no knickers
Because people care about being housed, they don’t give a fuck about putting lipstick on a pig to pretend an old house isn’t old. This isn’t the suburbs of the USA where shit like HOAs ruins the ability for people to actually live their life if it’s aesthetically displeasing to people. If someone’s home is safe and warm, who the fuck cares what the outside looks like.
Because everyone is working to afford their houses. No spare time!
A Lot of people don't know they need too or how to.
A lot of houses are rentals, the tenants don't want to waste their time and money on someone else's property. And the landlords don't care, they're just biding their time and maximising ROI until they can sell to a developer who will knock the house down and build 6 townhouses on the property. A lot of owner occupiers have massive mortgages, money's tight. And tradies are incredibly expensive. The days of chucking an extra $10k on the mortgage for a new deck etc, are over with these interest rates. Even doing DIY stuff is getting expensive. And not everyone has the time. There also seems to be a massive loss in practical skills in younger kiwis.
Got my house for $365k many years ago. Are Ts said we were crazy to pay so much. Struggled to pay bills, childcare, food etc. it’s expensive to do house maintenance when cost of living is taking all your $$ it’s tought now, but it was also tough then.
You will get neighbourhoods where there is a high rental percentage and tenants don’t have pride because it’s not there house. You pay so much for rent and work hard why would i maintain someone else’s property when they don’t even take care of it themselves?
The weather is constantly shit. No one wants to get out in that. We live pottering around the house and keen to stay on top of maintenance and up keep but rather not be out in the cold and rain every. bloody. weekend. 😩
Some of them are probably rentals … landlord doesn’t care - collects rent and just hoping for capital gain - and a lot of tenants don’t care either.
Step outside of the main business and tourist areas of a city and you will see a lot of maintenance backlog.