Wealthy buyers paying $2 million to live on island with no electricity
Affluent buyers are willing to pay big bucks for a back-to-nature experience.
Great Barrier Island is a large, unspoilt island at New Zealand’s northern tip.
From Auckland, it takes four-and-a-half hours to travel to the island by boat, or 30 minutes by plane.
For decades, Great Barrier Island has been a quiet backwater dominated by farming. But in recent years, the island has seen a boom in popularity among cashed-up tourists who want to experience a sustainable lifestyle.
“It’s becoming more a playground for wealthier people who can afford to fly in and out who want to be off the grid a bit,” local real estate agent Nadja Court tells OneRoof.
The median price for a house on the popular Medlands beachfront is now a cool $2 million.
“There’s more and more helicopters – people flying in on helicopters. In the last five to ten years things have changed dramatically,” Court says.
In the past, many of the properties on Great Barrier Island were cheap holiday baches – a New Zealand term for a small beach cabin.
But now, Court has seen wealthy buyers building $10 million, $15 million and $20 million houses on beachfront lots.
Unusually, this new cohort of rich city buyers is not put off by the island’s lack of creature comforts. The entire 285-square-kilometre island is completely off-grid.
“Everything on the island is run on solar, so there’s no power, and all the water is provided by rainwater. You have to get used to a bit more adversity because things always go wrong, so you have to learn,” Court says.
Most households use a combination of solar panels, wind turbines, and diesel generators as a back-up.
With no mains sewage, most properties require a septic tank or composting toilet to deal with waste.
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