A farm in Wainui has been sold with developers likely to add thousands of new homes to the changing face of the once rural Silverdale/Milldale area in north Auckland.
Bayleys Commercial announced the sale as being one of "New Zealand's largest residential community developments in what will become Auckland's next metropolitan neighbourhood".
Ryan Johnson, Bayleys national director commercial & industrial, would not reveal the buyer of 192ha Longburn Farm, saying the deal had not yet settled.
He said bids of between $30m and $90m were made for the farm, which had been in the same family for about 50 years and which is over the road from the new suburb of Milldale being developed by Fulton Hogan Land Developments.
Start your property search
Milldale is a 300-hectare master planned community and will have around 4500 homes, a town centre, reserves, schools, a retirement village and local neighbourhood centres.
Fulton Hogan also developed the now established nearby suburb of Millwater, which has its own motorway off-ramp.
In a LinkedIn post announcing the sale, Johnson said the agency had received nearly $1 billion in bids overall and that the significant landholding would undergo "unprecedented growth" over the next five to 10 years.
"Congratulations to our clients on this 'once in a generation' transaction and to the new owners on the acquisition of an exciting new residential community."
Johnson told OneRoof the agency had seen strong interest in the property outside of New Zealand.
"We actually got 22 inquiries from offshore which was predominantly Australia and the UK and I think that was all about timing and obviously border restrictions opening up and people being able to get here now.
"That was the first genuine, deep interest from offshore we'd really had in a couple of years."
He said local interest had come from developers and land bankers keen on an Auckland location only 25 minutes from the CBD.
"From international standards that ticks a lot of boxes. Obviously, the residential market in Auckland has gone so well and they could also see that this was the next step of Auckland North's development,” he said.
Boom town: Houses under construction in neighbouring Orewa. Photo / Fiona Goodall
"The sale is significant in that it endorses the continued growth of Auckland and that Milldale area and hopefully the infrastructure starts to come into play as well.
"The council had aims this might be developed over 20 years but it's probably going to be more like 10 years in terms of bringing forward the development time frames."
Johnson says Bayleys is about to launch another significant farm-to-residential sale, this time on the southern fringes of Hamilton.
The approximately 102ha site on Peacockes Road will soon be on the market for the first time in 140 years. "Amberfield" is already consented for a large masterplanned community in a growth suburb with 3.2km of river frontage.
Longburn Farm in Wainui is a greenfield site zoned Future Urban and Rural Production and is bordered by Wainui Road to the south and Upper Orewa Road to the north, and is 1.6 km west of the Northern Motorway.
An artist’s impression of the new masterplanned community in Hamilton. Photo / Supplied
It is one of the last development opportunities of scale in the area following the urbanisation of Orewa, Red Beach, Silverdale and Millwater and the commencement of Milldale in Wainui East.
Glen Stevens, of Ray White Orewa, said new subdivisions were great for the wider area and there are plenty of buyers wanting to move in. "If you look at the subdivisions that have been going for the last few years they have been selling well,” he said.
"You've got Millwater which is basically all sold out in terms of sections now, and you've got Milldale that appears to be selling down well.
"Definitely good for the community, I would have thought. It's bringing new skills into the area."
Stevens said the Ministry of Education bought some land for a new high school just off Upper Orewa Road a few years ago.
That site is off to the side of Milldale and would service new families as currently there are only two high schools in the area, Orewa High School and Whangaparaoa High School.
Infrastructure such as schooling and parks are usually part of the consent process, he said, and developers make contributions to the council.
Albany Ward councillor Wayne Walker, however, said his concern was that any new development would put further stress on infrastructure.
Capacity for dealing with sewage could be problematic, he said. "At this stage everything is pumped along the Whangaparaoa pipeline out to Army Bay and there are limitations on the pumping capacity, the size of the pipeline [and] the amount of processing we've got available, and that's just sewage."
