Auckland Council to reverse plans that have driven land speculation
Land speculators in rural Auckland could be left with hundreds of millions of dollars of property unable to be developed for decades, as the council puts the brakes on future urban sprawl . The councils Future Development Strategy will push out to perhaps beyond 2050, the likely re-zoning of much land which had been tagged since 2015 as Future Urban and might have become residential in the 2030s. Rural land prices rose sharply in areas such as Kumeu and Huapai in the northwest, during buy-ups over a five-year period, with some land changing hands several times as investors cashed-up and sold to others. The council now believed infrastructure was insufficient to unlock more land, and the emerging, increasing flood-risk , meant development should focus more on existing urban areas. Brent Bailey, the chair of the Rodney Local Board supported putting on the brakes, to let the planning catch up, and be really rigid with the planning. Kumeu has doubled in size in the time Ive been here since the mid-90s, and it would probably double again in the next decade, yet nothing has been done (to the infrastructure), said Bailey. He said areas once believed to be at risk of a flood every 100 years were now flooding annually, and the rapid transit needed to unclog State Highway 16 was unfunded and in the distant future. Kumeu was hard-hit by a flood in 2021 , and again in 2023. Bailey had little sympathy with property companys and investors who had bought rural land with the expectation of being able to develop it in the foreseeable future. Developers are often not thinking past the settlement date (for properties they sold), he said. Bob Howard, a past local board chair who has been selling real estate in the area for more than a decade, said the Future Urban designation a signal of future development potential had fuelled speculative buying for about five years. When Future Urban first appeared about 10 years ago, I sold a 10 acre block for $2.5 million, it re-sold a couple of years later for $4m and again in another couple of years for $6m, he said. He said orchards had been bought and left overgrown in the expectation of future development, and some landowners had turned down big offers in the hope of bigger gains when rezoning became possible. The revised strategy will see nearly 1000 hectares of land in the area, lose the designation Future Urban, and re-zoning might not occur for a further 20 years, after previously envisaged for 2028-2032. A further 3,700 hectares in blocks around Silverdale, Dairy Flat, and Wainui East, further north, are also going on hold. The Future Development Strategy is the big picture of how Auckland would grow over the next 30 years, and the council document said it reflects a lot of change in recent years, such as the government requirement for more intensification, and the more frequently felt effects of climate change. It expected the citys population to grow by more than 520,000 in the next three decades. The way we grow and develop should improve the environment, avoid hazards and help address the impacts of climate change, it said, with the draft due to be finalised late this year.