Buying a first home is always scary.
Marketing director Katie Mills knew it was time to bite the bullet and buy her own place, but still. Ten years after buying her first apartment – a cute 40 sq m in a 1960s block in St Marys Bay – she admits she was calling her mortgage broker every day.
“Tell me my life is not ruined by getting a mortgage,” she’d ask. Auckland was full of stories of some seriously alarming leaky apartment buildings, so Mills enlisted both building inspectors and her late dad, a bricklayer, to help check out her buy.
“He said you can’t go wrong with bricks and mortar, and that the workmanship of that time couldn’t be questioned. He was right.”
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The block of flats, which runs between Vine St and Hackett St at the bottom of St Marys Bay Road, features classic sixties-style decorative blockwork, including airy breeze block around the lower floors. Mills’ one bedroom flat was at the corner of the L-shaped block, north facing and sunny.
“I worked at the top of College Hill, the pub in the old post office was across the road, I could walk down the hill to home,” she says. “It had the most magnificent view of the harbour bridge as you walk down, it’s lovely.”
Tiny as it was, the apartment had its own charms. A cupboard by the front door for washing machine, a compact bathroom and a cute kitchen that opens to the sunny sitting room. Mills had the u-shaped kitchen upgraded earlier this year with smart new benchtops and cupboards and new appliances. The carpets were done about two years ago. There’s a car park with the apartment, but Mills says that there was always street parking for visitors.
“It had real charm, I loved it,” says Mills, who is now living across the other side of Ponsonby. "It was a very quiet block, you could head up to Ponsonby or down to Jacob’s Ladder and across to Westhaven and Wynyard Quarter.”
She’s noticed over the ten years she had the property that more of the block of 12 flats is filling up with owner occupiers, people keen on a little city foothold but preferring vintage to new. The body corporate is actively working on beautifying the property, as it’s such a special little block.
The property is being marketed by Angela Saunders of Ray White Ponsonby, for price by negotiation. While this would make an ideal first home buy, as it was for Mills, Saunders says the flat would also be a perfect lock up and leave for frequent travellers, or handy for downsizers needing a city pad.
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