Aspiring to get into one of Auckland’s poshest suburbs? Have a plan and hop on the waiting list, says one Remuera agent. There are rich pickings for those who know how to figure out the real Remuera.
Terry King, who runs Remuera Real Estate Register with wife Diana, says even those who already have a foot in the door in Remuera are often eyeing up the more expensive parts of the suburb.
It comes down to the grammar school zone and the non-grammar zone in Remuera, King says.
The Kings’ register matches people with houses and currently has around 40 people waiting for one of the suburb’s multi-million dollar homes which, he says, are in short supply.
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While many suburbs have desirable and not so desirable areas, Remuera is so delineated you could draw imaginary lines around the parts where people most want to live. The record $25.5 million price tag for the mansion owned by property developers Paula and Simon Herbert on the prime stretch of Remuera Road has not been beaten this year.
A mansion on Remuera Road set the New Zealand record in 2018, selling for $25.5 million. Picture/supplied.
“It starts with the fact the grammar zone stops at Upland Road – it’s on one side of the road but not the other. And then the rest of the houses with a Remuera post code going towards Meadowbank (the neighbouring suburb) are in fact Selwyn College. There’s a huge difference.”
King says the majority of people who want to come to Remuera do so because of schooling and all the activities that happen around the private school (from swimming teams to the choir). Parents often take and collect children at primary school age by car (make that late model SUV).
But when the children are older parents want them to be able to get themselves to secondary schools. So then locations near “the railway station if people are going to Kings College is at Remuera, or you’ve got Newmarket [station] close by. Or they can walk to Parnell AGC, or walk to Grammar.”
Hence, there are big price differentiations, he says. The highest price paid for a house in Ngapuhi Road, nearer Meadowbank, was around $2.65 m, but King says if you go back down the other way, from Victoria Avenue back to Arney Road, you couldn’t buy anything that would be considered nice for that price.
Two homes the Kings sold recently on those northern slopes, however, set the new owners back $5.7 and just over $7 million
The non-grammar zone areas are developing, though, King says. Younger families with means are starting off there and while the children are young they are happy for them to go to school in Meadowbank - though they would rather be in other parts of Remuera.
People who buy in the suburb are very controlled about what they want: “They have worked out what style of house they want, they’ve worked out basically what streets they want to be in and the size of the house.”
They will often have a 15-year time-frame and their home is their central focus.
“It’s a statement about how well they’re doing.”
King says if the secondary school zoning isn’t important to you, you can still go to streets with a Remuera post code and buy a cheaper house (think anything from $1.8m to $2.5m) “but that’s not what people come to Remuera for”.
