Mega-homes now make up 40% of the new-builds in Flat Bush, the South Auckland suburb that has been spreading out and up since the early 2000s.
Flat Bush is home to more than 34,000 people, many of whom are there because they can buy super-large homes to suit multiple generations of family living under one roof.
There are currently some 120 homes with five bedrooms or more for sale in Flat Bush. More than a dozen have eight bedrooms.
Barfoot & Thompson agents Dev Joshi and Anju Salwan have a seven-bedroom, four-bathroom home at 91 Flat Bush School Road priced at $1.6 million. The two-storey property sits on a 413 sqm site and comes with four living areas although just one kitchen.
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Another mega-home listed with Barfoot & Thompson is 8 Teitei Rise. The 363sqm house has seven bedrooms and seven bathrooms, and sits on just 388sqm of land.
And an eight-bedroom home is for sale at 88 Koromeke Street, and is being pitched as “lucky 88 eight bedroom”.
Harcourts agent Jay Zhang has three such mansions for sale in Flat Bush.
49 Koromeke Street, a six-bedroom 288sqm home, goes to auction on August 22, while the two seven-bedroom homes at 15 Tullymore Drive and 73 Koromeke Street are for sale by way of price by negotiation.
Zhang, who with colleague Lisa Cao focuses mainly on these plus-size homes, said that demand for larger family homes started growing in 2014 but really took off in 2018.
Inside 8 Teitei Rise which comes with a designer built-in wet bar. Photo / Supplied
Families from other parts of south Auckland went looking for homes where three or more generations could live together. “Mainly Indians, Cambodians and Vietnamese, Chinese. It’s part of their culture. They were upgrading from older suburbs like Papatoetoe, Mangere, Papakura, Takanini, maybe selling older houses,” he said.
Zhang said buyers were very particular about the style of the house – it must be brick and tile exterior with ‘executive’ interiors – and the two storey residences have a 315sqm to 335sqm floor plan on a 360sqm site. Builders know the upgraded interiors sell, with luxury interiors their only selling point for buyers facing a row of nearly identical exteriors.
“You want people to remember the inside when they’re house-hunting. The more bathrooms the better – before we’d have five bedrooms, three bathrooms, now it’s seven bedrooms, seven bathrooms, all ensuite, and two kitchens. Otherwise they wouldn’t sell. People come to Flat Bush to get a bigger house.
He added: "Buyers want to see the tile roof, very traditional styling. If it had a steel roof, nobody would call you. They don’t want to change, they grew up with brick and tile and they tell their kids to just buy brick and tile.”
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Zhang said buyers in this market didn't expect or need big gardens, just outside entertaining spaces.
Despite the size of the household, most homes have only double garages using large parking pads on the street to accommodate the extended families’ cars, with the rest fighting for space on the street.
Many of the homes are set up with a granny flat, which allows elderly parents to have some private space or families to take in a boarder to help pay the mortgage.
Prices have fluctuated as a result of the downturn. Zhang said that at the market peak, homes of up to eight bedrooms went for around $1.9m, with the ones on bigger or better sections fetching between $2.1m and $2.3m. But prices have dropped some 20% since then, said Harcourts Flat Bush co-owner Brandon Hoverd.
91 Flat Bush School Road is priced at $1.6m. The two-storey property sits on a 413sqm site and comes with four living areas but just one kitchen. Photo / Supplied
73 Koromeke Street is a 325sqm house on a 350sqm site. Photo / Supplied
Hoverd said there were lots of seven- and eight-bedroom new homes on the market because small-scale builders, hamstrung by the land prices they paid two years ago, were holding out for higher prices.
“Which is why some properties are sticking,” he said. Some buyers, many coming with cash offers, are on to it, with some making offers on 10 houses at the same time to get the keenest price from the small-scale developer/builders who need to quit their stock to start their next build. “They’ll say ‘who is going to get us the best offer?’
“My prediction is that we’ll see the next lot of land sold by Hugh Green all sold at a lower price, so the next 12 months the new lot of house [buyers] will have reasonable expectations of lower prices. They’re going further and further east towards Whitford, releasing land.
“Newer houses have eight bedrooms, but nine-bedroom places are selling quickly and earlier this year we sold a ten-bedroom.”
Zhang said very few existing homes go back on the market because buyers have a big choice of new-builds, but he expects this may change as homeowners start to refix mortgages at the higher interest rates or move to Australia. “If you bought in the last year you’re not going to sell this year, you’d wait four to six years. If you bought [in] 2021 you would have paid $300,000 more [than today’s prices], in 2022 maybe $150,000. That's a lot to lose and people know the market prices. “People would rather buy brand-new, second-hand is only $50,000 or $60,000 cheaper.
49 Koromeke Street, a six-bedroom 288sqm home, goes to auction on August 22. Photo / Supplied
88 Koromeke Street, in Flat Bush, is pitched by the agents as "Lucky 88 Eight Bedroom!". Photo / Supplied
“Here prices are set, people know what they get for that in Flat Bush. You could go to Long Bay, there are seven-bedroom places there, on larger sections, you’re looking at $2.3m. Or in Takanini you could get for $1.3m to $1.4m.”
Hoverd added: “[Prices] can all be in the $1.6m to $1.8m price range, but many [vendors] are asking us to keep the sale price confidential if they sell at market value.
“It depends on the circumstances, but these confidential sales can be $50,000 to $100,000 below market price. And that market price has [already] dropped 20% on two years ago,” he says, adding that at the peak builders were paying $900,000 for sections, $200,000 more for the latest land releases.
Hoverd said that demand for bigger and bigger homes really took off around 2018. “For these intergenerational homes, demand changed from one kitchen to two, extra bedrooms, extra living rooms. The feedback from buyers was for seven bedrooms or more. That feedback from agents was fed back to the builders and they responded,” he said.
As the new suburb moves further east, land developer Hugh Green Group has only a handful of new stages to complete, Hoverd said buyers were looking for bigger and bigger homes. “Eight is the new seven. They now want two bedrooms in the granny flat, sometimes three kitchens.”
Barfoot & Thompson agent Danny Lim said she had seen demand grow from four- to five-bedrooms in the six years she had been selling in the new suburb. “There might be five to seven family members who join together, some may even find a friend to join in to get the 10% deposit,” she said, adding that the market which pretty much stopped last year, has begun to pick up in the last three months.
“Prices dropped as buyers started to hold out and [vendors] accepted the new market. And I can see because of interest rates [stress] testing that some people are starting to panic, that they won’t get the same money, so have to buy before it changes again. These big houses are 40% of the market, but are just increasing in share. It won’t stop. A lot of these builders are Chinese companies, and this is their specialty."
Barfoot & Thompson agent Sheik Dean, who with colleague Tony Xu is marketing 8 Teitei Rise, said that his potential buyers do sometimes include European Kiwis, but they are mostly Indian and other Asians.
He said most of his buyers go for bigger interiors over any sort of garden. “These are second and third homeowners, they don’t want to have to maintain outside. And there are multiple parks in the area,” he said.
Large seven-bedroom homes generally sell for between $1. 7m and $1.8m, he said but a six-bedroom home might fetch $1.6m, while smaller three- and four-bedroom homes go for between $1m and $1.2m.
“At the moment the new-builds are the bigger places on, say, 388sqm of land,” he added.
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