Monthly median prices show prices are settling to a plateau over the medium term coming off the high of 2009. The Wellington market was slow to ease up and peaked later than other centres in 2009, and is showing signs of lagging behind the optimism showing in the housing markets in other regions.

Turnover is currently sitting at around half of the traditional averages for the area but is trending upwards.

The average time to sell in March and April was a speedy 28 days for North Wellington indicating a readiness of vendors to meet the market and  suggesting that there is good buyer activity in some price brackets.

View the market trends graphs compiled by David Garratt of Guardian First National Real Estate here

A public meeting held by the Johnsonville Progressive Association last week allowed DNZ property Fund to talk about their plans for the future development of Johnsonville Mall. Phil Brown, the general manager of investment and development was unable to give a firm date for the start of redevelopment but he said that DNZ’s board hoped to make a decision this coming November to proceed with the proposed $180 million dollar project.

The project is dependent on the interest shown by potential tenants and is also dependent on finding sufficient funding to complete the development. The centre is jointly owned by DNZ and two Australian fund managers who were reported to be keen on getting the project going.

If the green light was given, work could be started by this time next year and completed within a two-three year time frame. The proposed development would see the Mall triple in size and include 1300 parking spaces.

Check out the latest updated concept plans and drawings here

Other changes in the area

# At the meeting, there was mention of an upgrade to Alex Moore Park with more parking off street http://www.alexmoorepark.org.nz/images/AlexMoorePark.pdf

# The swimming pool was also mentioned as overdue for it’s planned upgrade.

Wellington City Council officers have recommended that a $3.8 million revamp to the Keith Spry Pool take place in the 2012/13 financial year. It will include building a learn-to-swim pool, a spray pool and a family changing area, as well as upgrading the main pool.

The Keith Spry Pool was built in the early 1980s. However, Northern ward councillor Justin Lester say the facility is showing its age and it no long meets the needs of users. Mr Lester says the revamp still needs to be approved by councilors but he expects this to happen as part of the council’s deliberations on its long-term plan.

Check out the broader framework for the redevelopment of the Johnsonville CBD and immediate surrounds in the Council’s Northern Growth release.

Written by David Garratt – a local real estate salesperson, northern suburbs advocate and regular blogger

Mayor Celia Wade-Brown will officially open Amesbury School’s new hall this Saturday (12 May) – an exciting new facility for Churton Park.

Wellington City Council gave $850,000 towards the hall’s development last year to make it fit for wider community use. Mayor Wade-Brown says the funds have turned what was to be a standard school hall into an ideal community facility.

“Council’s support has helped enable the size of the hall to be doubled from its original design, which makes it suitable for large community gatherings, as well as provides leisure opportunities for more people.”

The hall now boasts two badminton courts, kitchen facilities and storage space. The Council also gave a further $22,000 grant to the board of trustees to buy things that the whole community can use - kitchenware, a sound system and a retractable basketball system.

This agreement with the Ministry of Education came about as a result of the Council’s Community Facilities Review in 2010.

“There was a demand in Churton Park for better community facilities, so we talked with residents and came up with this solution for the new school,” says Mayor Wade-Brown. ”This is a great example of a partnership providing better results for the community.”

There is an operating agreement between the school and the Council, where the hall must be made available to the wider community after school hours on weekdays, on weekends and during school and public holidays. Amesbury School opened in February this year for Year 1-6 students.

To find out more about the Hall facilities, visit the School website

To hire the hall and find out availability fill out the Booking form.

If you have any queries, or wish to discuss booking the community hall, please contact the school. Tel: 04 477 3423

Written by David Garratt – a local real estate salesperson, northern suburbs advocate and regular blogger

Chilis Restaurant is recently opened in the Newlands Mall just behind the fast finishing New World supermarket. Open for takeaways and as a fully licensed sit down restaurant with bar that seats 40, Chilis has a wide range of Indian cuisine to appeal to all tastes.

The owners state that the restaurant offers a sophisticated fine dining experience with effortlessly charming staff, discrete service and tantalising food that few can compete with.

I haven’t yet had the chance to sample the menu, and as a staunch Curry to Go patron, it will take a bit for me to change. They do, however, offer beef madras – something I’ve been pining for since curry to go took beef off the menu.

The Chilis menu can be viewed here and it is extensive!!

Does Chilis Stand up to the taste test?

I ordered takeaways last Friday night, forgoing my usual Curry to Go in order to test out the menu at Chilis.

Good points

#  free delivery – It was a ghastly night and the fact that I didn’t have to change out of my ugg boots and give up my space in front of the woodburner was a definite draw card.

# Good portion size – There was food to spare after my wife and I filled our tummys.

# Onion Bhaji – yum! A bit greasy but the plum-esque sauce was tasty.

# Garlic naan – freshly cooked and still mildly warm when delivered.

#fast service – the gentleman on the phone suggested the order would take 40 minutes (way more than the usual 15 mins I’ve come to expect from Curry to Go). However, the delivery turned up on my door in 25 mins.

# extensive menu options – a huge menu with a large number of unique dishes I haven’t discovered yet.

Not so Good Points

# I had the choice of mild, medium or hot.

Lamb Madras – I ordered medium but the heatometer barely registered any chilli hit.

Chicken Rogan Josh – again there wasn’t enough heat in the dish.

# far too much sugar and salt and not enough fresh spice used.

In summary

Overall, both my wife and I were let down by the dishes we chose. We both were left struggling to wade through the gravy and felt that both dishes missed the sparkle of fresh ingredients. Both dishes felt like they’d come from big vats that had been brewing all day. I’m not sure if I’ll be ordering my dishes in a big hurry and am already looking forward to my Curry to Go usuals this Firday. My favs? Chicken Jalfrezzi, Rogan Josh, and Madras.

Written by David Garratt – a local real estate salesperson, northern suburbs advocate, part time food critic and regular blogger

“The teachers don’t have desks, pupils can learn while sprawling on beanbags and there’s no such thing as a classroom – welcome to the school of the future, reports Michelle Duff.

Nestled down a quiet street in the northern suburb of Churton Park, Amesbury School became the first new state school to open in Wellington in 23 years yesterday.

And when the 80-plus pupils bounded through the front gates, it wasn’t to rows of desks and stuffy classrooms – it was to an architecturally designed environment where tables are optional, and windows open automatically when the room gets too hot.

Two years in the planning and with a price tag of about $9 million, the school was opened to take pressure off nearby Churton Park school, which had an overflowing roll of up to 500 pupils.”

Read more here…

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/6349057/New-9m-Wellington-school-opens#share

The school website http://www.amesbury.school.nz/

The school blog http://amesburydrive.blogspot.co.nz/

McKenzie Higham school design concept http://www.mckenziehigham.co.nz/portfolio/education/7.php

Work on the 800-metre road, known as the Westchester Dr extension, is well under way. The road will also provide direct access from the North of Churton Park to State Highway 1 and to Stebbings Valley and take the heat off the main entrance into Churton via Halswater Drive.

Artists impression of the finished road looking from the motorway end

When completed, the Westchester Dr extension is expected to carry about 2500 vehicles a day. That could increase to 9000 once housing developments for the area were finished. Churton Park is one of the faster growing suburbs in Wellington and amenities are being developed to cope with the extra population including the recently finished shopping village and new school in Amesbury Drive.

The development of the road was held up early on by a small but very vocal band of local residents who live in Glenside and believe that the character of their stretch of road along with the stream and environs are going to be spoiled by the new roading.

The quarterly analysis of the property market covering the first 3 months of 2012 clearly show that sales have really taken off, but as yet listings are slow to respond.

The chart below paints a very clear picture of this situation. The quarterly sales growth represented by the red bars shows that year-on-year sales growth has been in positive territory and growing at an accelerated rate for 4 consecutive quarters.

It all began a year ago, when in the second quarter of 2011 the sales year-on-year grew by 7%. The next quarter this grew to 18% and then in the final quarter of 2011 the sales of property really accelerated to 22% year-0n-year growth.

The start of 2012 has seen this growth accelerate again with a 29% growth. This growth represents 3,969 more properties sold in the first 3 months of 2012 than compared to the same time last year – an extra 44 properties a day being sold.

This rise in sales is not being matched as yet by a rise in new listings, as represented by the blue bars in the chart. In the first 3 months of 2012 there has been an increase, but only a 10% increase, but that is not approaching the consistent rise in property sales that has been seen over the past year.

This clearly demonstrates the lag that occurs between sales activity as a measure of demand in the property market and the resultant supply side reaction – usually a 6 months lag.

Around the country, across the 19 regions tracked by REINZ and Realestate.co.nz the picture in the majority of regions is consistent – listings lagging the rise in sales.

The region which standouts for a contrarian trend though is the Coromandel – weaker sales and declining listings.

The Wellington House Market

Source: unconditional.co.nz.

Visit this blog to keep up with the latest property related stats

I read this great update on Open2view today regarding this years Architecture awards. Have a read and watch the vid for inspiration!

The 2012 winners of the New Zealand Architecture Awards were announced yesterday by – who else – theNew Zealand Institute of Architects.

The Awards, in their words, “provide a snapshot of the best of New Zealand architecture each year and showcase the work of NZIA Practices.” The twenty winners were chosen from those who earlier won themselves a Local Architecture Award. And one of these will get the big trifecta when the 2012 New Zealand Architecture Medal recipient is announced on 25 May.

A few aspects of this year’s awards particularly stuck out:

The four winners in the Residential category were, in typical understated kiwi fashion, houses that “didn’t strive to stand out” but were too hard to ignore all the same. It doesn’t have to be a tribute to Picasso to win – beautiful and accepting of its surroundings does more than nicely.

A number of Auckland Council projects picked up accolades also. The design for Wynyard Quarter, the Art Gallery and the New Lynn transport redevelopment were among them. The latter is a particular favourite of mine, having drowned many a time waiting for a train at the old station.

Auckland Council was quick to issue a statement celebrating their projects’ achievements, and fair enough. Absent from their release however was convenor of judges Hugh Tennant’s disappointment in the lack of medium or high density projects presented (“these are building types we desperately need to be good”). If Auckland is indeed heading down the compact city route then he is absolutely right.

Something else that sticks out? This café built on a mountain ridge:

The judges’ citation specified “wind and snow loadings, site access and sheer buildability in a location requiring the aerial delivery of materials” as some of the hurdles faced when building the Knoll Ridge Cafe. (Spell-check be damned – ‘buildability’ might just be my new favourite word.)

Also the HOME New Zealand 2012 Home of the Year, designed by Herbst Architects, picked up another accolade – and there’s not much I can say about this dream house that this video doesn’t already:

One glance at the winners shows an abundance of very talented designers who also recognise the need for practicality. In a tough economic climate developers must, more than ever, ‘build clever’ – and it seems our nation’s architects are delivering.

Congrats to all the winners, and you can check out more photos and citations on the NZIA website.

As part of Neighbours Day celebrations up and down the country, The Newlands Community Centre is promoting Picnic In The Park on this Sunday. Bring your friends and family and celebrate our fantastic community! Newlands Picnic in the Park at Seton Nossiter park in Grenada Village (entrance at 100 Mark Ave). Take the chance to check out the recent planting and mulching work.

for more info on Seton Nossiter park click the pic

Values in the Wellington area are the same as they were a year ago, having dropped 2.0% for the first six months, then steadily increasing for the last 6 months.

“Across Wellington, prices seem to be firming and more listings are coming to the market. Buyers are still being cautious, especially with the public sector restructuring and its effect on job security in the region” said QV Valuer Pieter Geill.

Have a look at the North Wellington Market stats just updated with February figures here

Info and graph sourced from qv.co.nz