Page 01 — Orientation
What does $1.1M actually buy out east?
In the eastern bays a $1.1M cap doesn't buy the villa or the weatherboard bungalow on the hill — those start around $1.4M and climb past $2M on the waterfront. It buys an apartment or a small unit. The whole board is about which of those holds its value, and which is cheap for a reason.
$1.005M
Auckland median sale price (May 2026)
↓ 23.4% below the Nov-2021 peak
+4–5%
2026 price forecast (BNZ / Cotality)
Blue-chip east tipped to lead any recovery
$1.17–2.02M
Avg 3-bed house, Ellerslie → St Heliers
Every one is above your $1.1M cap
−9%/yr
Newmarket, slowest-growing AKL suburb (24mo)
The apartment-glut cautionary tale
The Six Form Factors
Every under-cap property type, scored
Filled radar. A modern freehold apartment wins on amenity & lending; a small unit or cross-lease wins on land & growth; leasehold wins on nothing durable.
Small standalone / cross-leaseUnit / older flat
New townhouseFreehold apartment
Leasehold apartment
Where The Cap Bites
There is no house under $1.1M out here
Barfoot's March-2026 average 3-bed price by suburb. Every bar clears your $1.1M cap — so under it, you're in the apartment & unit market, full stop.
Read This First
The one-line version
Out east, $1.1M is an apartment budget in a house neighbourhood. That's not automatically bad — a modern freehold apartment or a tidy unit in Mission Bay, Ōrākei, St Heliers or Kohimarama buys you a beach-suburb lifestyle a western-isthmus house can't. But the same budget also buys the traps this market is famous for: leasehold titles whose ground rent resets upward, Newmarket investor apartments that have gone backwards, and ground-floor units in the coastal-inundation zone. The rest of this board sorts the lifestyle buy from the value trap.
Page 02 — Who Wins Where
Which suburb dominates on which dimension?
No suburb wins everything. This heatmap scores all 11 across the axes a sub-$1.1M eastern buyer actually trades between — including two the west never worries about: coastal risk and freehold-vs-leasehold title. Brighter = stronger.
Suburb × Dimension
The dominance heatmap
Scores 0–100 (composite/derived where noted). The inland value edge (Ellerslie, Meadowbank, St Johns) runs hot on affordability, freehold & low coastal risk; the waterfront runs hot on amenity & growth but cold on coastal & title.
The Trophy Metric
Long-run capital growth by suburb
30-yr trend growth. The blue-chip bays compound fastest — Newmarket's apartment stock is the glaring exception.
The Cashflow Metric
Gross rental yield by suburb
PropertyMetrics 2026 midpoints. Ōrākei, Mission Bay & St Heliers lead — but a high apartment yield can mask leasehold or body-corp drag.
Page 03 — The Rankings
Rank the board on the axes that matter
Toggle the axis. Same 11 suburbs, re-sorted by what you care about most.
Ranked
Typical entry price (under-cap stock)
Lowest realistic buy-in for stock that clears the $1.1M cap — mostly apartments and units. Derived from suburb medians and stock mix.
Page 04 — The Value Knee
Where does paying more stop buying quality?
Composite quality (growth, yield, land & title security, amenity, low coastal risk, freehold) against 3-year holding cost. The knee is where each extra dollar stops buying meaningful quality. Everything under the grey floor line is cheap for a reason — leasehold and the Newmarket glut live there.
Quality vs 3-Year Cost
The efficient frontier, the knee, and the junk floor
Each point = a suburb/type combination. Green = clears the quality floor AND sits near the frontier. Leasehold and investor-apartment tiers are greyed below the floor.
Clears floor & near frontier (buy zone)On the boardBelow quality floor — cheap for a reason
Bang Per Buck
Quality points per $100k of 3-yr cost
Efficiency ranking. The inland value edge converts dollars into durable quality best; waterfront pays a lifestyle premium.
The Knee In Words
What the curve is telling you
The knee sits low — around a $760k–$860k buy-in. Below it you fall through the floor into leasehold apartments (ground rent resets, banks lend 60–70%) and the Newmarket/Parnell investor-apartment glut (negative recent growth). The sweet spot is a freehold apartment or unit in Ōrākei, Kohimarama or the inland edge (Ellerslie, Meadowbank, St Johns) — most of the achievable quality per dollar. Above the knee you're buying a waterfront postcode for a small footprint: real lifestyle value, but the quality-per-dollar curve flattens hard.
Page 05 — The Wider Picture
Zoom out: apartments, and where the east sits
The category-audit rule: don't only show the trophy tier. Under $1.1M in the east the volume is apartments — and the apartment market has its own supply story and its own worst performer.
The Density Tier
Attached homes now dominate new supply
Share of NZ new-dwelling consents that are townhouses/apartments/units — 6% in 2012 to ~45% today. The east intensifies as apartments near Newmarket, Ōrākei & the waterfront corridors.
Auckland vs NZ
The most expensive region — the east, its priciest corner
Median sale price by region. Your $1.1M cap is roughly the national median, but the eastern-bays house market sits at 1.5–2× Auckland's median.
The House-Price Gulf
What a 3-bed house costs by suburb vs your apartment budget
Treemap of average 3-bed house value across the eastern board. The gap between these and your $1.1M cap is exactly the "buy an apartment instead" gap.
Page 06 — How It Evolves
The cycle, and where 2026 sits in it
Auckland's median round-tripped: up to a Nov-2021 peak, down 23%, now grinding sideways-to-up. Apartments — especially Newmarket's — lagged the recovery hardest.
The Round Trip
Auckland median sale price, 2015 → 2026 + forecast
Indexed medians. Dashed tail is the 2026–27 consensus (+4–5%/yr). You're buying ~9.6% below the long-term trend — the discount is real, but apartments carry it unevenly.
Density Mix Race
Standalone vs attached — the crossover
Animated. Watch attached homes overtake standalone in Auckland consents. Press play.
Market Temperature
Volume down, listings up, days flat
2026 vs 2025: fewer sales, more stock, same time-to-sell = negotiating power sits with buyers, especially on apartments.
Page 07 — What Drives What
Does the postcode premium buy growth?
The uncomfortable question for the east: yield and price trade off, and the highest-amenity waterfront also carries the highest coastal risk. Explore it.
Price vs Yield
The cashflow penalty of a nicer postcode
Higher-priced suburbs mostly yield less. Newmarket is the outlier — cheap apartments, decent sticker yield, but the growth to match it isn't there.
Three Dimensions
Price × Yield × Growth, coloured by tier
Rotate it. The value cluster (green, inland edge) and the waterfront (teal) separate cleanly from the apartment-centre tier (pink).
Correlation Check
What moves together on this board
Correlation of the buyer metrics across the 11 suburbs. Amenity↔coastal-risk is positive (the nicest spots are on the water); price↔yield is negative.
Page 08 — The Composition
Break the board into its parts
Tier → suburb, and the ownership structures underneath. Out east, freehold-vs-leasehold is the fault line that decides value.
Nested Structure
Tier → suburb
Treemap of the eastern board by tier. Click to drill in.
Radial View
The same board as a sunburst
Inner ring = tier, outer = suburb. Shows how much of the under-cap east is waterfront apartment vs inland value.
Ownership Structure
Freehold or leasehold — this is the question out east
Share of under-$1.1M eastern stock by title type. Leasehold and unit-title are a bigger slice here than anywhere in Auckland — Mission Bay, Ōrākei and Parnell carry notable leasehold apartment stock.
Page 09 — The Flow
From what you want → to what you buy
Follow your top priority through the property type it forces you into, and out to the suburbs that deliver it under $1.1M.
Priority → Type → Suburb
The decision Sankey
Flow width ≈ how much under-cap stock connects each priority to each outcome. "Want the beach" funnels you to waterfront apartments; "want value" funnels you inland.
Page 10 — The Distributions
The spread inside each type
Averages hide the range. Here's the full price distribution by property type in the east — and where your $1.1M cap slices through each.
Price By Type
Violin + box, with the cap line
The red line is your $1.1M cap. Apartments & units sit comfortably inside; a small cross-lease is a stretch; a 3-bed house is a different market entirely.
Holding Cost Spread
Ongoing cost by type (rates + body corp + ground rent)
Box plot of annual ownership cost. Apartments carry body-corp; leasehold adds ground rent that a house simply never pays.
Quality Floor
What falls through it
Composite quality by type. Leasehold and glut-apartment tiers sit below the floor — the "cheap for a reason" segment.
Page 11 — Compare Everything
All suburbs, every axis, at once
Parallel coordinates for the full board, then a small-multiple radar grid so you can eyeball any suburb's shape in isolation.
Parallel Coordinates
Drag any axis to filter the board
Each line is a suburb. Drag along an axis (e.g. growth > 6.2) to highlight only the suburbs that qualify.
Small Multiples
Every suburb's fingerprint
Raw-SVG radars. Ghost ring = the eastern max on each axis; filled = the suburb. Axes: Affordability · Yield · Growth · Land · Amenity.
Page 12 — Build Your Own
Filter the board to your constraints
Pick a buyer archetype or set your own filters. The charts re-render live to only the suburbs that survive.
Presets — real buyer archetypes
Or set filters
Survivors
Suburbs that clear your filters
Ranked by composite quality. Empty = loosen a filter.
On The Curve
Where your survivors sit on value
Same value-knee axes, but only your shortlist. Green still = clears the floor & near the frontier.
Page 13 — The Verdict
Three picks against three real constraints
Scored against the buyer your Trade Me search implies: someone set on the eastern bays & Newmarket, open-home ready, capped at $1.1M — i.e. buying an apartment or unit, for the postcode.
The Value Pick
Ellerslie / Meadowbank / St Johns
Buy-in ~$760k–$860k · yield ~3.6% · growth ~6%
The inland edge of the east. Your $1.1M gets closest to a real dwelling here — a tidy unit, cross-lease or small house — on freehold-heavy titles, off the coastal-inundation map, with solid growth. Best quality-per-dollar on the board and where the knee sits. Trade-off: not the beach.
The Premium / Lifestyle Pick
Mission Bay / St Heliers / Kohimarama
Buy-in ~$780k–$900k · yield ~3.8–4.0% · growth ~6.5%
A modern freehold apartment or unit steps from the beach in the suburbs your search names. Strong long-run growth and unbeatable amenity — you're buying the lifestyle a western house can't give. Non-negotiables: confirm freehold (not leasehold), check the LIM's coastal-inundation layer, and read the body-corp accounts.
Budget That Clears The Bar
Freehold apartment, Ōrākei / Remuera fringe
Buy-in ~$680k–$780k · yield ~4.0% · growth ~6.4%
The floor-clearing budget play: a post-2010 freehold apartment on Ōrākei's ridge or the Remuera/Newmarket fringe — lends cleanly, yields well, sits on blue-chip land value. Beats every leasehold title and the Newmarket investor glut on risk-adjusted terms. Avoid sub-50m² and 1990s–2000s monolithic blocks.
Avoid Unless You Know Exactly What You're Doing
The traps this cap pushes people toward out east
| Trap | Why it looks cheap | What it actually costs |
|---|
| Leasehold apartment (Mission Bay, Ōrākei, Parnell) | Half the price of a freehold next door | Ground rent resets every 7–21 yrs and has cratered values on the waterfront before; banks want 80+ yrs left & lend 60–70%; reverts to freeholder at expiry. Near-zero growth. |
| Newmarket / Parnell investor apartment | Cheapest sticker, headline yield ~4%+ | Newmarket was Auckland's slowest-growing suburb — about −9%/yr over 24 months. Oversupply, high body corp, weak resale. Yield on a depreciating asset isn't a return. |
| Ground-floor / seafront unit (the bays) | Beachfront at a "bargain" | Coastal-inundation & 1m sea-level-rise layers now sit on the LIM. Storm-tide exposure, rising insurance, and future managed-retreat risk. Elevation matters more than the view. |
| 1990s–2000s monolithic apartment block | Priced below the rest of the block | Leaky-era weathertightness risk (no cavity). Special levies for a reclad can run tens of thousands per unit; full building reclads reach $330k–$500k+. |
Bottom line: out east under $1.1M you're an apartment/unit buyer whichever way you cut it, so the whole game is title and risk. The winning move is a freehold apartment or small unit — either the inland value edge (Ellerslie/Meadowbank/St Johns) for the numbers, or a beach-suburb apartment in Mission Bay/St Heliers/Kohimarama for the lifestyle — bought ~10% under trend in a buyer's market. The losing moves are a leasehold title, a Newmarket investor apartment, or a ground-floor unit in the inundation zone.