[RoadRunner]

What is up with the Kiwi practice of building houses right in front of/behind each other??? (I have to get this off my chest so bear with me.)

You would actually have to see it to believe it but try to picture this - a standard house facing the street. A house on the right (so close you could reach out and shake hands). A house on the left separated by two driveways - one for the middle house and one for the house RIGHT behind it! Yes, right immediately behind the first house. So, the front house has no backyard and the back house has no front yard. And in many of these cases, the back house was built right in front of a hill going up so that it didn't have any back yard either! :eek :eek

Why would anyone buy these houses? They obviously do, since we saw this everywhere - not just in Wellington CBD. One of the supposedly new (and popular?) suburbs is Churton Park. That seemed to be particularly bad for this double stacking arrangement. But it was literally everywhere, every suburb, every subdivision...

I think I was so surprised because you hear about all this empty land (which we flew over lots of empty green space) and that Kiwis like to garden. You can't garden when the plot of land is less than 1/4 acre!! (And, yes, the sections are really that small almost everywhere we looked.)

Seriously, this was everywhere - not just old houses or rundown houses or rentals - but brand new large homes!

What in the world? It seems the only way to ensure you might have some guarantee of not having a house right behind you is to buy with a street on one side and a sheer drop off on the other.

Okay, thanks for letting me vent. Just seems like it is going to be really hard to find a reasonably new house, close to Wellington, with a teensy bit of privacy, at a price we can afford. This is probably our single biggest concern at the moment.

[chrissie]

Now you can understand why I got so depressed I had to go to the doctor and start taking Prozac after weeks of unfruitful househunting!!! I too just couldn't believe it when I saw it (its exactly the same here in Auckland on North Shore!!). Absolute madness!!! :eek

[Moorf]

Likewise in Chch, in town they are too close for my liking, hence why some go out of town and commute in. Hence why it took us so long to find somewhere and then compromising on location.

Another weird thing is that many of the "nice" areas here are by the airport and the "not so nice" are by the sea at Brighton end... v. weird. I put these in "" because it's debateable which are nice and which are not!

[eric_amanda]

Subdivision is the reason why. People had 1/2 or 1/4 acre sections and when land became worth so much they all decided to cash in on it. Same with new houses, only now it seems they are squeezing 3 houses into 1/4 acre sections!! :roll:

This is what put us off living in town. Although we are close enough (about 7/8km I think) from town it is a 10 min drive and Eric can still come home for lunch if he is working in town! :nice1 Just going out of town a little further gave us a nice rual lifestyle block with 7 acres and neighbours more than a hand shake away!!! :nice1

[veronica]

that was an unpleasant surprise to us as well. I don't think anyone minds when there are 4 or 5 houses that are obviously townhouses/Apartments on a 1/4 acre block, its when its two or three different style bungalows all squished together.

[Tate6]

I am completely dismayed (sp?) by this also.

Here is my concern:
How does this affect your drinking water when then neighbor's septic system is up the hill from you???? :eek :eek

The house hunting is one of the things I am really worried about. :wah Especially because we have lived on our 8 acre property with 3 lakes and a river closer than most of our neighbors for the last 12 years!!

Terry

[sweetpea]

What is up with the Kiwi practice of building houses right in front of/behind each other???

Ugh. What a nightmare. Last time I was looking for a rental house, this very thing drove me batty. I wanted a nice fenced yard for the dog, and I went to see so many places that were advertised as houses with yards. Only problem, the backyard was taken over by other houses, little apartment buildings, "backyard studios", etc. There was sometimes a 4x10 strip of grass, but that was about it. The city of Berkeley encourages these, because they want more housing density. I couldn't imagine that would be the case in New Zealand. I never thought I would say this, but I think there's something to be said for zoning...

[veronica]

Most houses built in this fashion are in the city and suburbs and are on mains sewage and drainage, so no septic tank worries.

[ruthyroo]

The kiwi 1/4 acre is a bit in the past now, unfortunately, at least in popular / urban areas. Developers are very good at squeezing the maximum number of sections from a piece of land, and as pressure has increased on local authorities to let landowners make money from selling their land for housing, the acceptable size of a property has shrunk drastically. Most new subdivisions that come across the planning dept here go for the maximum profit / minimum lot size approach. Another issue is that rather than building housing scheme and selling off all the houses, developers here often just subdivide and sell the land - and everyone puts their own house on. As a result you can buy a nice new section with a great view, but you have virtually no control over what your neighbour might choose to build.