Watch This Before Buying A Townhouse in 2025!

Are you considering investing in a townhouse?
In this episode of Property Now, Ed from Opes Partners looks at the booming townhouse market in New Zealand.
This video offers an honest review, using Ed's personal experiences and economic data, to determine if townhouses are a good investment.
Understand the limitations, the high growth potential, and the common mistakes buyers make.

#townhouses
#propertymarket
#propertyinvestment

License Code: MYC56HL9DB

[jondoe]

the council requirements for new housing is ghastly. a 3-4 bedroom townhouse commonly only has 1 off street park, and a row of new townhouses are supplied by a narrow driveway, which lead onto likely a narrow new road with no space for street parking.

[richardv]

They are great. I just bought one. Never regretted it.

[paulgruschow]

My unit is one of 20 and is having issues with water tightness. The values are now land value and levies are up 250% most of the Levy's are being spent on lawyers no one has the money to fix the issues. The Unit Titles Act is an abomination

[causeceleb]

Will be interesting to see the selling data houses v townhouses in another 10-15 years given Ed's own admission that in the last couple of years townhouses make up 40% of new builds implying a bit of saturation in the market of that type. Looking back where townhouses were only a small percentage not only has a smaller sample but supply/demand dynamics are different

[KiwiCatherineJemma]

Regarding car parking for new developments... Actually, in New Zealand, it is the central government, ie Wellington, that has forced local councils to allow new multiunit developments to have limited or indeed zero parking.

In many areas including the Christchurch Central City where I live. In just one side of my street in one city block length... In my street since the 2011 Earthquake, many old single family houses have been demolished and in their places are the following all new builds... one house replaced by 3 units, with one parking space to share for all 3, then (3 old small house sections got amalgamated into one large section) a 4 storey structure of 31 units there are 7 car parks, one being a disabled car park space. and other single houses with their own parking demolished and replaced with, 4 units, 6 units, 11 units and 18 unit developments, all without one single off street parking space.

(The 18 unit site was previously a small commercial site, with own parking).

I did a count-up once and figured that on this one block, one side of this street, another 39 cars will be looking for a park on the roadside.

Keep in mind this street was often fully parked out by city workers before the 2011 EQ as there are no time restrictions or payments and it is an easy walk into the city centre).

I'd like to blame the local council, but the requirement to allow new medium-high density unit developments with zero parking space requirements, came directly from the central government in Wellington (the nation's capitol).

[ericxu]

nice one, thanks for sharing, shout out from Albany

[RubberDuckk]

Do you consider there to be a different between bodycorp townhouse and freehold townhouse?

[garethmcivor]

Can we differentiate between townhouses and terraces? There is a big difference..

[iancraig-yd]

Be interesting to know also if the 'glut' of townhouses is in Auckland only and therefore, less of an issue elsewhere?

[joefunbags]

Be great to do a case study of some actual townhouse numbers, values etc. Possibly some of your own?😊

[lwxjdbdj]

after one day looking at the issue, my conclusion is apartment or terrace houses or even connected twin units, has no much investment value and almost none capital gain potential in Auckland.

[rageme]

Ed/Opes could you do a video on serviced apartments? like Queenstown has these for like $200k and me as a layman is thinking why aren't investors scooping these up. is there issues with them? is there hidden costs etc

[dekiwi]

I've got no issue buying a townhouse if it's good value.

But buying a new townhouse as an investment and expecting it to appreciate quickly (unless FOMO is strong) is a little like buying a brand new car and not expecting the value to drop once you drive it out of the shop.

[vincerosieflynn]

@Opes Partners & @ Ed McKnight, you should’ve included the cons of dealing with a BCA/ RA as these are big concerns for potential investors. Also another consideration would be warranties on all the appliances as they have the potential to break down more often due to higher tenancy turnover. Another consideration is the insurance policy which is higher now that certain areas in NZ have been deemed higher risk than other areas, ie Wellington & Hutt Valley. All this equates to less $$ you get. In my opinion, our stand-alone rentals are less hassle & preformed better than our townhouses. If we were to invest in more property in the future we wouldn’t purchase anymore townhouses. Cheers.

[revpitty]

town house will be worthless in 10-15 years, the market is smothered with town house especially with no parking

everyone will want/pay and fight for a stand alone house with a front and back yard

[seanford]

The kind of property you were probably recommending everyone buy in 2021 2022.

[benj]

No way they are worth it, I don’t want to live inches by my neighbours and some of these places the front door is right on the street, wtf?

[erictan]

There are so many factors that are at play including location and local population size to compare townhouse vs non townhouse landed property before arriving at conclusion on price growth and townhouse trap fallacy. In my area ppl are willing to pay $2.6 millions for a tiny townhouse in Auckland but no one will settle for a urban townhouse in Hamilton where we used to live for $600k. Then the same townhouse in AKL went up by 6% this year and the Hamilton one less than 0.5%.

[mybell]

Town houses are like Matchboxes one over the other...
Town houses are horrible....
The driveways are so narrow...