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Tuesday 11 November 2014

Wheels: Spinning

It feels like there's a large amount of building work happening on our little stretch of the West Coast right now.  The market is tough at the moment - listings are being bought quickly, but they're really hard to get.  Becoming homeless is a bit of a risk if you do sell (to say, move into a better part of town or find something bigger, as opposed to cash out or move out of the area) because few listings mean if you do sell the pool of houses to buy is equally limited and the rental market is tight, so that fall-back just isn't there.  The Expressway work is well underway and will take years to complete, so there's been a big influx of families move in for the duration, and I've told that a lot of houses have been bought.  I guess if a company will be renting them for their workers long-term, then buying is a good option for keeping as much money in your own pocket as possible.

Anyway, I think this is what has led to all this building.  There are new houses, sure.  But there are a lot of big extensions going on, which I love watching happen because I love architecture for a start, but it's really exciting seeing what people are doing with houses when they, quite literally, rip into them.  This is a house that both the husband and I love, which sits on the beach front.  We walk past it sometimes every day, definitely a number of times a week.  Seeing this sent me scrambling up a hill to take a photo - one day it's a house, the next day it's half a house.  I can't wait to see what they do with it.

Another thing I love about this place is that the houses are all so different.  There are the more similar newer subdivisions, but this sort of work isn't happening in those.  This is happening to the older and/or smaller beach houses where houses are on different kinds of sections with different kinds of views and wotnot to maximise.  Some houses change phenominally, and some are done so cleverly you'd never think they'd done anything to it at all (even though you know if you've been watching that it's now twice the size).

The other day, a section I've been watching for about a year suddenly changed.  One minute there've been initial groundworks sitting there for months without change, and the next I'm driving along with my coffee and a massive crane is swinging pre-fab concrete tilt-slabs into place.