The Good and Bad of Living in the Eastern Bays
There are always discussions about the best neighbourhoods to live in in Auckland. After getting a lot of requests about different parts of Auckland to live in, I even wrote this post. Now that I’ve lived in Auckland for coming up on three years, I’ve grown pretty attached to my little pocket of the city - the Eastern Bays. The traditional Eastern Bays are (from west to east) – Orakei, Mission Bay, Kohimarama, Saint Heliers, and Glendowie, but people also now include Saint Johns, Stonefields, Meadowbank, Wai-O-Taiki Bay, and Glen Innes in this description as well.
We first discovered the Eastern Bays on our initial reconnaissance trip to New Zealand back in 2017. It wasn’t one of the areas I booked an AirBnb in, but it was a pocket of the city I was interested in checking out. All it took was one trip to the aquarium followed by scones and coffee purchased at the Saint Heliers Cafe then enjoyed across the street at the beach to have me hooked. I knew that if I could choose anywhere to live in Auckland, this would be my top pick.
When we returned in 2018 for our 90 day stay that turned into an actual move, we started in an AirBnb right next to Saint Heliers Bay village. I loved being able to walk to multiple coffee shops, the library, lots of restaurants, and a playground on the beach. It was absolutely dreamy coming from Austin where you typically drove if it was more than a block. A rental house and home purchase and almost three years later, and the walk along the beach hasn’t gotten old. Here are the things I love about this area:
It’s a close knit neighbourhood - I know all of my neighbours and can rely on them. There are a fair number of Kiwis, but there are also people from the Netherlands, the UK, Australia, China, and even the US. Many people have been in this area for decades, but there are also a lot of families moving in because…
It is an extremely family friendly area - the houses are larger than in the city center. The schools are good. The parks and playgrounds are next level, and people come here for that unicorn combination of close proximity to the CBD and to have a yard. I love that there are options for extra curricular activities within minutes. We’ve got gymnastics, swimming, Saturday morning soccer (or cricket, depending on the time of year) trampoline parks and rock climbing gyms all nearby.
It’s not too far from anything - The CBD (aka Downtown) is a straight shot down Tamaki drive, and if you’re going to get stuck in traffic, this is a ridiculously scenic place to get stuck. It’s also less than twenty minutes to two huge shopping centers - Sylvia Park and Westfield Newmarket, and less than thirty minutes from the airport. There are lots of busses and a rail station in Orakei if you want to take public transportation instead of driving. Plus, there are four gorgeous beaches to choose from if you want to spend some time splashing in the waves and soaking up the sun.
But there are some real downsides:
It’s not cheap - This isn’t the most expensive part of town (here’s looking at you, Herne Bay, where the average three bedroom house rents for NZ$1048 per week, or US$3,125 per month) but it is on the pricier end of things. In St. Heliers, which is in the middle of the Eastern Bays, the average rent for a three bedroom house is NZ$799 per week, or about US$2,283 per month. The most “affordable” suburb within 10km of the CBD is Avondale where a three bedroom goes for an average of NZ$600 per week, or about US$1,789.20. (A good tool for looking up average rents by suburb is provided by the Tenancy Services.) I should also put a huge caveat on the rents discussion. These rents are representative of your average Kiwi house which likely won’t provide some of the amenities that are standard in the US. If you want a house with things like double glazed windows, central heating, etc. it will be above the average rent.
Auckland’s bad traffic extends to the Eastern Bays - As I mentioned above, living in the Eastern Bays means getting stuck in traffic. There are some ways around, by finding residential backroads to avoid some of the major thoroughfares or by driving only at certain times of the day, but it isn’t feasible to completely avoid the gridlock. This is compounded by the small number of east/west streets that take people into town.
The summer months are intense - I admit, this one is a stretch because it mainly focuses on the strip near the water and doesn’t apply to most of the Eastern Bays, but it is something to think about. On a nice weekend day in the middle of the summer, the Eastern Bays are packed with people from all over Auckland taking advantage of the beaches and parks. This means traffic will be at a literal standstill from time to time and it takes forever to get home. It also means that there are very noisy, very jubilant people until all hours of the night. if you live close to the beaches. In Orakei, there will be lots of families barbecuing and pitching tents to stay cool. Mission Bay will be slammed with people eating at the restaurants, playing in the fountain, and lounging on the beach. Kohimarama is the least populated, but if it is a regatta day at the Kohimarama Yacht club, the streets will be packed with people and their sailboat trailers. St. Heliers beach will also be crowded, but it’s typically not quite as bad as Mission Bay. The parking police are very active in St. Heliers, so I’m always on guard when parking here.
If you’re in the market for some place that is generally quiet and good for families, I absolutely recommend the Eastern Bays. We pinch ourselves sometimes that we get to live in such a magical place.
