Has apartments not catched up to NZ?

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8212 posts

Uber Geek

#1958451 15-Feb-2018 09:45

NedLudd:

Any other suggestions to add? What are our other 'God given' rights....?

I'm gonna get myself a 1967 Cadillac Eldorado convertible
Hot pink, with whale skin hubcaps
And all leather cow interior
And big brown baby seal eyes for head lights (yeah)
And I'm gonna drive in that baby at 115 miles per hour
Gettin' 1 mile per gallon,
Sucking down Quarter Pounder cheeseburgers from McDonald's
In the old fashioned non-biodegradable styrofoam containers
And when I'm done sucking down those greaseball burgers
I'm gonna wipe my mouth with the American flag
And then I'm gonna toss the styrofoam containers right out the side
And there ain't a goddamn thing anybody can do about it

Lenovo

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1101

3121 posts

Uber Geek

#1958468 15-Feb-2018 10:10

kryptonjohn:

And you only need one dick with a loud stereo and bass music and your life becomes true hell.

Exactingly the same for me living in a house. Many houses around me are rentals : booming bass, loud all night parties, being smoked out or stunk out by neighbours
activities
Still have issues with neighbors, be it aprtments or houses

If we want to 'fix' the housing shortage in the suburbs, we need to build up
The days of owning a 1/2 acre house & section are long gone, unless you are really rich.

MikeAqua

7769 posts

Uber Geek

#1958471 15-Feb-2018 10:18

NZ has not been well served by some of the apartments built here.

I live in an apartment part time. I love it but ... I get to go back to a house with an amazing sea view part of the week. I would not love my particular apartment 24/7.

I go to lots of open homes and rental viewings and I've concluded that apartments (in Welly anyway) seem to be of two types. Built for investors or built for wealthy owner-occupiers. There isn't much middle ground. Oddly rental price for reasonable apartment are not much higher than for a dodgy one. Some of the built-for-investment apartments are OK, but not fabulous.

Some buildings have a mix of apartments. The mid- upper buildings have things like common gardens, pool areas and recreation spaces.

Some of the worst apartments I have seen are on upper levels of older smaller buildings. Bad glazing, lack of ventilation (unless one counts draughts), inadequate security and poor layouts abound.

That said, some of the nicest apartments I have seen are very well done old building conversions. But these are toward the upper end of the price range.

Mike

kryptonjohn

2523 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1958487 15-Feb-2018 10:41

1101:

kryptonjohn:

And you only need one dick with a loud stereo and bass music and your life becomes true hell.

Exactingly the same for me living in a house. Many houses around me are rentals : booming bass, loud all night parties, being smoked out or stunk out by neighbours
activities
Still have issues with neighbors, be it aprtments or houses

If we want to 'fix' the housing shortage in the suburbs, we need to build up
The days of owning a 1/2 acre house & section are long gone, unless you are really rich.

At least in a house you have some separation. In an apartment they can be jumping up and down right above your ceiling or shouting just on the other side of your wall, and you have to step around them in common areas such as driveways and entrance ways.

No thanks.

Doesn't need to be 1/2 acre or even 1/4 acre. You can have a decent house on 400m2 and maintain some privacy and separation.

There is plenty of land, but the council doesn't want to open it up as it wants intensification and there are unresolved issues with infrastructure provision. Much of this would be simplified if the council was more interested in doing council stuff i.e. infrastructure and less interested in doing social stuff which should be the responsibility of central government.

jfanning

438 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1958523 15-Feb-2018 11:21

kryptonjohn:

At least in a house you have some separation. In an apartment they can be jumping up and down right above your ceiling or shouting just on the other side of your wall, and you have to step around them in common areas such as driveways and entrance ways.

No thanks.

Doesn't need to be 1/2 acre or even 1/4 acre. You can have a decent house on 400m2 and maintain some privacy and separation.

There is plenty of land, but the council doesn't want to open it up as it wants intensification and there are unresolved issues with infrastructure provision. Much of this would be simplified if the council was more interested in doing council stuff i.e. infrastructure and less interested in doing social stuff which should be the responsibility of central government.

I've living in apartments previously, and prefer them. The last apartment I was in is the same size as the house I currently live in (110 sqm), I didn't suffer from neighbor hood noise, it was mostly traffic noise (it was in a big city), I get more neighbor noises in my current house, and we are in a very small city now.

The apartments were warmer, quieter, had great shared green areas, nice trees. Maybe NZ hasn't worked out how to build a nice apartment yet, and from all the housing news that is constantly brought from Auckland I would have thought this was a necessary path forward for us.

kryptonjohn

2523 posts

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#1958527 15-Feb-2018 11:23

I agree it needs to be a more attractive *option* for the many people who like it.

I just don't like the way the council wants to ram it down the throats of everyone.

kryptonjohn

2523 posts

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Lifetime subscriber

#1958528 15-Feb-2018 11:23

I agree it needs to be a more attractive *option* for the many people who like it.

I just don't like the way the council wants to ram it down the throats of everyone.

MikeAqua

7769 posts

Uber Geek

#1958540 15-Feb-2018 11:41

kryptonjohn:

At least in a house you have some separation. In an apartment they can be jumping up and down right above your ceiling or shouting just on the other side of your wall, and you have to step around them in common areas such as driveways and entrance ways.

In our building if there are noise issues, you simply advise the building manager. People can be fined and persistent offenders can be prohibited from living in the building. Those provisions have been used.

I got called one day because my TV had spontaneously come on (happens occassionally) and was disturbing my neighbour.

Mike

Benjip

940 posts

Ultimate Geek

ID Verified

#1958541 15-Feb-2018 11:42

I live in an apartment (which I own) and I love it. Close to the city (7 minutes drive to Ponsonby and where I work in Grey Lynn), warm, sunlight all day, very high quality sound proofing. I only hear neighbours when kids run in the hallway.

Would I rather own a large section and a 4-bedroom house? Absolutely, but good luck finding one of those in my location for under $2 million.

kryptonjohn

2523 posts

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#1958543 15-Feb-2018 11:45

Benjip:

I live in an apartment (which I own) and I love it. Close to the city (7 minutes drive to Ponsonby and where I work in Grey Lynn), warm, sunlight all day, very high quality sound proofing. I only hear neighbours when kids run in the hallway.

Well that's good to hear!

afe66

3181 posts

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#1958566 15-Feb-2018 12:12

I think in nz ,there isn't a tradition of building good quality apartments. Most of them have been small aimed at students and foreigners. We just don't trust builders.

There have seemingly seen to be frequent articles on the problems of body corporate ownership, leaking buildings and a perception that everything is done on the cheap.

I lived in a high end apartment block in the uk which was interesting. The sound insulation was average and I got to listen to the gradual disintegration of the marriage of the couple next door who always seem to argue, mind you they did have an energetic and loud sexual life.

When the car lift broke down so 10 of us lost our car parks, the body corporate couldnt give a rats arse. They blamed the lift engineers who blamed the builders who said it was the previous owners problem. At least my car wasn't one trapped down there for three months. No one worked to solve the issue of where the rest of us could park. The richer owners who weren't affected but happily sat on the body corporate didn't think it was an issue nor that they should perhaps lend there "spare" car parks to those who had none. All very self interested. "I paid for two (or three) parks so my friends can visit so why should I give up my parks"

Benjip

940 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#1958572 15-Feb-2018 12:20

afe66:

When the car lift broke down so 10 of us lost our car parks, the body corporate couldnt give a rats arse. They blamed the lift engineers who blamed the builders who said it was the previous owners problem. At least my car wasn't one trapped down there for three months. No one worked to solve the issue of where the rest of us could park. The richer owners who weren't affected but happily sat on the body corporate didn't think it was an issue nor that they should perhaps lend there "spare" car parks to those who had none. All very self interested. "I paid for two (or three) parks so my friends can visit so why should I give up my parks"

That sounds like a terrible and dysfunctional body corporate committee. I'm a member of the committee in my building and we would never let an issue like that persist.

afe66

3181 posts

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#1958575 15-Feb-2018 12:25

Democracy in action. It would cost money to fix which everyone would have to pay including those not affected, who didn't want to pay of course.

Similar issues arose in uk where there were professional body corporates that charged fees but any money not spent was profit. Often these groups where owned by the original developer and acted as a ongoing source of income once the developer had finished and it was part of the purchase agreement to use them and which took a lot of time and effort for the new owners to get replaced with a new body corporate.

afe66

3181 posts

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#1958577 15-Feb-2018 12:31

Benjip:

afe66:

When the car lift broke down so 10 of us lost our car parks, the body corporate couldnt give a rats arse. They blamed the lift engineers who blamed the builders who said it was the previous owners problem. At least my car wasn't one trapped down there for three months. No one worked to solve the issue of where the rest of us could park. The richer owners who weren't affected but happily sat on the body corporate didn't think it was an issue nor that they should perhaps lend there "spare" car parks to those who had none. All very self interested. "I paid for two (or three) parks so my friends can visit so why should I give up my parks"

That sounds like a terrible and dysfunctional body corporate committee. I'm a member of the committee in my building and we would never let an issue like that persist.

Out of curiosity what would/could you actually do ?

Would you have forced those with more than one car park to give them up? Does your body corporate actually have the power to do this if the multipark owners doesn't want to ?

Would you have paid for a car park for us somewhere else? Who would have paid for this? (there was no parking slots on the road for hundreds of meters)

Benjip

940 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#1958598 15-Feb-2018 13:03

afe66:

Out of curiosity what would/could you actually do ?

Would you have forced those with more than one car park to give them up? Does your body corporate actually have the power to do this if the multipark owners doesn't want to ?

Would you have paid for a car park for us somewhere else? Who would have paid for this? (there was no parking slots on the road for hundreds of meters)

A.

As a committee, we would most likely act to repair the car lift, using funds from the LTMF (Long Term Maintenance Fund), or make an insurance claim if it had been damaged (and if that was the cause for the car lift not functioning). This all assumes that the car lift is deemed common property (I don't see why it wouldn't be), in which case it's no different to a jammed garage door that traps everyone's vehicles inside.

If it proved an ongoing issue and the car lift was failing regularly, we would call an EGM (or wait until AGM) to vote on replacing the system. I imagine it'd be an Ordinary Resolution which would only need 51% of owners to agree to replacing it (and therefore each owner being levied for their share of the cost, which would typically be done on a unit entitlement basis, eg. someone with a 4-bedroom apartment would pay more than someone with a 1-bedroom apartment). If the vote failed, or if it were a Special Resolution (requiring 75% agreement) and didn't get the votes required, we would then advise owners to apply for "minority relief" which is useful in such cases where it's objectively something that needs to be fixed.

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