If property is all about timing, then LeAnne Taylor reckons she and husband Jon got lucky big time, coasting the wave of falling prices after the GFC then riding the wave of not only the Auckland housing boom but also benefiting from the Auckland Unitary Plan.
LeAnne and her family are enjoying the sweet life of Katikati now, in the western Bay of Plenty, where Jon has a boat and where they have just bought a café.
None of it was intentional, says LeAnne, who says the family are hardly property entrepreneurs.
They just got lucky and that luck changed the course of their lives.
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She and Jon are born-and-bred Aucklanders who met overseas then, like thousands of young couples, came back and stayed with mum and dad to save like crazy for their first home.
In 2004 they bought “a bog standard, three bedroom, rectangle box” in Glen Eden for $215,000, which they improved by adding a garage and decking.
LeAnne Taylor and her daughter outside the family's cafe in Katikati.
In 2007 the GFC struck and in 2008 New Zealand property prices fell sharply.
In 2009, LeAnne and Jon decided to keep their first house as a rental for a year (eventually selling for $420,000) while they moved to one in Glengarry Road which they bought for $400,000.
This house had the half an acre they wanted for their three children and the animals. The home was down a 70 metre driveway, was off the road and was nice and peaceful.
But then came the Unitary Plan which freed up land in the area to be developed, which turned out to be good for them although not immediately.
The neighbouring land was built on and suddenly they had construction right at their window and hated it.
LeAnne’s parents, meanwhile, had moved to Katikati and the family had fallen in love with the area on their regular visits so they put an offer on a house they liked, came back to Auckland and contacted Glovers Real Estate.
When their property was listed they had four offers within the week and in 2015 sold the home to a developer for $1.18m - nearly $800,000 more than they had paid.
“We bought a beautiful big home (in central Katikati) and it’s sitting on 1600sq m so we’ve still got the land for the dogs which is great.”
Their good luck doesn’t stop there. Not only has their Katikati home, which they paid $500,000 for, gone up in value to $800,000 but LeAnne says the local council has told them they can subdivide 700sq metres of their land because Katikati is so popular the council is looking for properties to subdivide so more homes can be built.
LeAnne and Jon are in their early 50s now and have no regrets about leaving Auckland. In fact, she highly recommends the move - “don’t go to Tauranga, though. Tauranga’s full, it’s over-flowing.”
She says they hear the occasional “bloody Aucklanders” type comment but there are so many Aucklanders around it doesn’t matter.
“We met one guy and he was 10 doors down from us at Glengarry but we didn’t know him.”
The couple recently bought Café Viva in Katikati and LeAnne says life is good.
“We couldn’t have done any of this in Auckland. Jon’s got himself a boat, he’s able to go out fishing. He bought himself a ute. It’s been great.”
