Seniors Housing & Healthcare Trends

LOS ANGELES: Boomers have embraced a vertical village which deliberately excludes any car parking facilities.

Bikes have their own lift in a new Morningside apartment building without car parks where all units pre-sold within a month of being offered.

Mark Todd of developer Ockham Residential said the seven-level Aalto at 2 Finch St, off Western Springs Rd, was so popular that when it was marketed in May 2021 all places pre-sold quickly, with buyers putting down 10 per cent deposits.

Around 30 per cent of those purchasers were first-home buyers and the same percentage were landlord investors.

An Auckland apartment building only about 3km from the CBD, where prices were sub-$1 million, proved extremely popular at the height of the market.

Since November 2021, prices have declined from the peak in November 2021.

Todd acknowledges the market has changed since 2021, with higher interest rates, but said the company had now successfully finished the building, developed on a tight site of just 800sq m site where one house once stood but where the land is now zoned for terraced housing and apartments, earmarking it for upscaling.

Instead of car park spaces, 112 bike parks are offered in a basement with caged storage areas. Bikes and their riders have their own lift, or as Todd puts it, their own reception area, beside the main entrance to the apartment building.

Six storeys above ground certainly sticks out in the area. Aalto is between a single-level weatherboard villa and a two-level brick-and-tile unit.

Todd acknowledges that Aalto certainly stands out, and says some people weren’t happy but Auckland Council granted consent non-notified because the building fulfils long-called-for objectives to develop land more intensively.

“We’re the first cab off the rank in Morningside,” Todd says of the Ockham statement, so square and red in the mainly single-storey residential area.

“But this shows there is a market for compact, affordable, well-located apartments even if they don’t have car parks. So this is our fourth zero-car-park building. We like to show that you can do new things.”

Daisy off Dominion Rd, The Nix in Grey Lynn and Mt Albert’s Model are the other Ockham blocks without car parks.

Aalto’s sixth floor is a communal space for apartment residents, with its own kitchen/living/dining area, furnished outdoor deck areas with fruiting lemon trees and a workroom: a long bench seat facing the views with a line of low tables and power points. Residents can bring their laptops there to work, socialise and enjoy the huge views.

That communal area has floor-to-ceiling black tiles on the walls between its kitchen and dining area, reflecting light from outside.

The glazing has touches of maroon or purple. Joinery is black and from Altus Industrial.

A bedroom suite is also available on that sixth floor, also exclusively for residents’ guests, asking a flat $100 fee then $25/night – a little like a mini-hotel within the apartment block.

Ockham will open Aalto on Monday, inviting Auckland Central MP Chloe Swarbrick to do the honours.

The building takes its name from Finnish architect and designer Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto and his red-brick house designs and Todd acknowledges that both inside and out, the apartments are colourful.

“The more buildings built without car parks, the better. It’s only a small percentage of the market that will consider buying without car parks. It’s not for everyone,” he says.

He acknowledges that not offering car parks meant Ockham could keep unit prices below $1m and also that developing a seven-level block with 39 units on the tight site meant smaller-format apartments.

The cheapest places pre-sold for $550,000 and are 40sq m ground-floor studios. The most expensive places went for $925,000 for a 58sq m, two-bedroom apartment with a 40sq m garden.

On Thursday, the media visited the one-bedroom apartment 308 which faces west, a 44sq m unit with a 4sq m balcony. That is staged-furnished to give an idea of how it might look when being lived in. A combined washing machine/dryer is behind a cupboard in the lounge in floor-to-ceiling storage. The unit has a dishwasher and is designed to take a full-height fridge but only has a half pantry.