The Snail Like Pace at 13/15 Hawthorne Crescent

Having waited nearly three years to demolish the properties in Hawthorne Crescent, you would expect them to be raring to go..

But no.

Having demolished the two perfectly good houses in short order, the builder is doing what they always do and taking their sweet time getting anything done at all (as they have so many sites and, I suspect, not enough builders to build... they are invariably stretched too thin and sites are left for long periods of time). 

I suspect that the digger is meant to make it look busier than it has been for the past week. They have only dug out enough earth to create a concrete 'driveway' and mark out what appears to be 6/10 properties that will tower over the properties around them. Needless to say the windows will probably all view neighbouring gardens, if our development is anything to go by. 

Privacy is a concept most developers ignore and the Council does not care about.

This leads me to assume that there will be a bunch of very expensive houses on the site. The developer has a fanciful 'artists impression' which looks hideous. Characterless, boring and I assume, monstrously expensive and out of the range of the average bus driver, nurse or teacher.

Stokes Valley is rapidly turning into an absolutely soulless tip packed with half empty 'developments'.  I can see there are a lot of empty properties in the Glen Road development and I know there are lots empty in the Tawhai Street site. No one is buying, except 'investors'.

The houses market in NZ is screwed and real people or those who love gardens can forget about a home.

I did read that property investors don't mind if the houses they invest in stand empty as they can be written off to tax. Not bad if the asking price is $850,000 well beyond the pocket of most people. 

I sure as hell could not afford to pay that much for a boring, soulless and garden free property sticking out above the neighbours like an eye sore. But the developers, and I suspect the Council want to fill the Hutt Valley with houses with a concrete drive and no garden, and for a healthy profit.

So more hideous overpriced houses rise from the dus.