- Retirees are seeking cheaper properties in small towns due to rising living costs and insufficient pensions.
- Heatha Edwards, of Harcourts Waipukurau, sold properties in Takapau and Dannevirke to retirees under $150,000.
- Norsewood and Dannevirke offer affordable homes with community spirit, attracting interest from both locals and overseas buyers.
The retirement maths is not adding up the way some older homeowners thought it would when they bought their homes, so they are seeking out cheaper properties in New Zealand’s tiny dot towns.
Start your property search
Heatha Edwards, manager and owner of Harcourts’ Waipukurau branch, recently sold a couple of sheds on a big section in Takapau to retirees for under $150,000.
“I think they’ve got plans of putting a little something on there eventually, but they can just park up in their motorhome and have a winter base. It’s a lock-up-and-leave kind of thing, and it’s revoltingly affordable.”
Edwards sells in and around Central Hawke’s Bay and Tararua District. Her patch includes Norsewood, a small town founded by Norwegian loggers in the 1870s, and Dannevirke, which was founded by Danish and Norwegian immigrants.
She said a lot of people were hitting their retirement years and going: “Hold up, where are we going to be? We would like to be mortgage-free.”
Edwards also sold a brick house on McCallum Street, in Dannevirke, to retirees for around $282,000. Photo / Supplied
At the upper end of the Norsewood market is 3 Adolphus Street, a three-bedroom character home looking for offers over $565,000. Photo / Supplied
She recently had a couple in their 70s move from Whanganui to Ormondville, another tiny settlement just south of Norsewood. They wanted to clear their debts and have some money in the bank, “because the pension isn’t a generous weekly stipend if that’s all you’ve got to rely on”.
The boomer generation thought owning a home ticked the retirement box, or so they thought. “They didn’t have KiwiSaver, and they thought they were doing the right thing by living modestly and buying their own home, thinking ‘Now we are sorted for retirement’,” Edwards said.
But with rates and insurance costs through the roof, and power and grocery bills rising, many people on the pension are seriously struggling, she said.
Another of Edwards’ listings, a brick house on McCallum Street, in Dannevirke, was snapped up by a retired couple last month for close to its $282,000 asking price.
The four-bedroom home with a double garage was said to have been built by the former owner of the town’s brickworks.
Discover more:
- Kāinga Ora takes a $5m hit on petrol station site
- Grand Designs couple unveil their latest mega renovation
- Coastal town where homes are cheaper than Auckland deposits
Back in Takapau, Edwards has listed a three-bedroom 1920s home on a quarter-acre section, which, she said, could be cut in half because it was on a corner with two driveways. The property is for sale for offers over $249,000.
In Norsewood, she has a “desperately cute” and fully renovated cottage for sale for offers over $565,000, which, she said, was at the pricier end of the market.
“If your idea of heaven is parking up on a deck listening to birds in complete privacy with your hair on end and your rattiest singlet, this is the place to do it," she told OneRoof.
“This one is just deliciously private at the end of a sunny little street with only two other houses on it. Certainly, a house in town, in the village itself, would be cheaper.”
Interest has come from around the country, and from a Scottish woman who saw Edwards’ Instagram video. The woman was selling her house in Scotland to move to New Zealand but had been held up by the war in Iran. “There's an uneasiness of people with that sort of thing [travelling], which we are not used to.”
A two-bedroom Art Deco-style home at 2A Gundersen Street, in Norsewood, has a $350,000-plus price tag. Photo / Supplied
Edwards said Norsewood was carved out of the forest by the Norwegian logging immigrants, only to burn down around 10 years later.
The Government at the time had wooed immigrants to New Zealand, and nearly 1000 Norwegians moved into the Norsewood area, but the journey could not have been easy: “You have to think, you weren’t going on a posh cruise ship. You’re on a boat going across that nasty, nasty, cold, vicious seas up the top there.”
Norsewood retains its Scandinavian heritage; it hosts an annual Viking festival and celebrates Norway’s Constitution Day, and proudly displays a fishing boat gifted to the town’s residents by the Norwegian Government.
Edwards said Norsewood was the kind of place where you get out of the car and pause. “Suddenly all the busyness melts away, where it’s just a charming, cute, little, quirky village with about 150 [residents].”
Sharon Cuttance, from For Homes, is selling a two-bedroom Art Deco home at 2A Gundersen Street for over $350,000. The property, which is close to the Norsewear factory, one of the town’s main employers, comes with a paddock next door, and while “pretty original” inside, it is in good shape.
Cuttance said the Norsewood market was flat despite it being a “good little town”, whereas in Dannevirke the market was patchy but properties were still selling. “We always keep on ticking over. We don’t have the highs and lows you see in the cities. We just keep on ticking over.”
A Category 2 Gothic Revival church in Norsewood is looking for buyers with budgets of over $399,000. Photo / Supplied
A church and hall at 461 Kumeti Road, Dannevirke, are up for grabs for over $320,000. Photo / Supplied
Property Brokers agent Jessica Mackay sells in Norsewood, too, and has the former Presbyterian church on the market for over $399,000.
The Gothic Revival church, complete with a pulpit and a Category 2 Historic Places listing, has been on the market for “quite a while” and while there has been steady interest the land use was designated for religious purposes which needed to be changed for the church to be lived in, although the heritage listing did not apply to the back part of the church added later.
While a lot of interest has been from people wanting to convert the church into a residence, more recently, there has been interest from people wanting to use it as a yoga retreat or a wellness centre.
Mackay said Norsewood has a great spirit. “It has a really nice community feel to it; everyone takes care of everyone. Stunning views all around you. It kind of has a country vibe, but there’s just enough there - you know, you can still go to the pub or go to the dairy and get an ice cream.”
Edwards also has a church for sale. The property at 461 Kumeti Road, in Dannevirke, is looking for offers over $320,000.
“If you’d like to buy a church and a church hall, right down to the altar and church pews, all the hymnbooks and colouring-in pencils, I’ve got one of those, too.”
The catch is that the buildings are classified as commercial, so, as with the Norsewood church, they cannot automatically be used as a residence, but Edwards said the hall has toilets, a kitchen and a bedroom.
Reclassifying the property as a dwelling would be a game-changer, but Edwards was still expecting the property to sell: “What a cheap price to buy an acre complete with your own church.”
The church, St Albans Anglican Church, was gifted by the neighbouring farm and consecrated in 1914.
Edwards said while towns like Norsewood and Takapau were tiny, all were near bigger centres, like Dannevirke and Waipukurau, so services were only a short drive away: “It’s not like you’re isolated with nothing.”
- Click here to find more properties for sale
