Gerundula

Hi all

We (family of 4, kids 4 and 16) will be moving to Auckland soon. The job is in Albany.

Can anyone suggest some decent areas to live in, within a reasonable driving distance to Albany (say 30 to 40 mins).

Any advice is appreciated, as we have never been to NZ before!

scrubbedexpat094

What are you looking for? By the beach, town, rural?

Budget may determine where you can be. So you can look at the upper bays on the north shore, Silverdale, Millwater, Orewa, Whangaparaoa Peninsula, Dairy Flat slightly further north. Lots of areas available to you.

Traffic congestion will be another concern. Auckland council is reasonably good at providing land for house building but useless at putting in the necessary infrastructure first (or even later for that matter). Hence, traffic on SH1 is often at a standstill and the rush hour is much longer these days. At least you won't be trying to cross the bridge unless you decide to live in the city.

I would think that a decent school would have to come into play in your choice of area. I can't help with this as we don't have children. This and your budget will help with the decision-making process and may make your decision for you.

Bo-Jangles

There's plenty of options in Albany itself and is a fairly big area and plenty of nice places you could choose to live within 30 minutes. Alongside those mentioned by Vital you might consider Greenhithe, Waimauku, Kumeu, Hobsonville, Helensville, Riverhead, Coatesville depending on what you can afford and type of housing you want. Most of Albany is relatively new (built over the last decade) and growing all the time. All the schools in Albany and elsewhere on North Shore have a reasonably good to excellent reputation. i.e. None of them are really bad as far as I can tell.

Justcol

Anywhere south of Albany on the north shore is within that time scale for a commute.
In the morning all the traffic is heading south so you'll be fine
Now you just need to set a budget and find a house within it

Gerundula

Thanks all for the information so far.

We are looking at a 3 bedroom house, with a budget of around 700k. Is is feasible to get a decent place for that? Looking on housing websites most places seem to be auctions or negotiable, which doesn't really help much!

Bo-Jangles

$700k is possible if you look at some of the more rural areas and are prepared to commute / travel a bit for senior schools. If you look on Tradme at individual properties it shows what nearby properties have sold for (at bottom right hand side).

There's houses around Whangaparoa in this price range - likely will need updating a bit, like this one at Stillwater

(Just a random example of one that had a price on it)

Make This Your 2016 'Must See' ! | Trade Me Property

Justcol

I think the whangaparoa peninsular is probably the best bet for that price range.

There's one road in and out but I think Albany in half an hour is doable
or at least it was when I left there 3 yrs ago, but so many things seem to have changed
so quickly up there I couldn't say for certain now.

scrubbedexpat094

With all the building going on along the peninsula traffic congestion has increased significantly . There are bottlenecks all along Whangaparaoa Road plus there's a major bottleneck at Silverdale with all the development there.

We bought in Gulf Harbour 9 years ago naively believing that another road (PenLink) was going to be built in the next few years. It was even on the road maps that we bought at that time. But no, I'd be gob-smacked if it did ever happen now. So if there's a major accident on Whangaparaoa Road the whole of the peninsula grinds to a halt. This has happened a couple of times in the past year. It affected some of the Gulf Harbour ferries too as one of the captains was stuck in the traffic trying to get to the ferry .

I do like living in this area having said all that. $700k will certainly get you a reasonable house on the peninsula, just beware of leaky homes!

I'm rather fond of Greenhithe, looked at buying there back in 2005 when we first came out (but that's another boring story!).

Justcol

I did like living up there, My time at Arkles was lovely.
Gulf harbour always had affordable houses, I couldnt settle when I tried it there but maybe it was the area of GH we were in, I dunno