Hauraki Village offers an easy-care, lock and leave lifestyle for people over 55 or in retirement. The village has particular appeal for owners of motorhomes, boats and caravans, and is unique in that it offers RV parking alongside your house.
Developer Peter Rudkin shares the story of how Hauraki Village came to be.“In 2006 I bought land in Paeroa to build a small but ‘usual type’ of retirement village. I obtained the
necessary resource consent but then the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) put the real estate market into lockdown and I decided to delay the project.
In the meantime my wife, Di, and I had bought a caravan – we became NZMCA members (#60218) – and we got thinking about what we would want if we were living in this village situation. We knew that we didn’t want to feel crowded and we wanted to have our caravan next to the house.
I couldn’t find any New Zealand retirement villages designed like this so we built a prototype show home with its own RV park on the Paeroa site. The concept was very well received and gave us confidence to develop a village with each home having its own RV park plus a communal RV washdown, waste and barbecue area for all to share.
To accommodate RVs and to give owners a spcious environment, the land area associated with each property needed to be about twice that of a typical retirement unit. Securing the additional land for this and getting the necessary resource consents then took the best part of two years.
The village would be built in three stages with a total of just 26 homes. The builder, Justin Leach of Coromandel Homes, and his firm has gone on to build all the homes to a very high standard, as two retired builders in the village can verify. Stages one and two comprise 20 homes, all of which are sold bar one.
Stage three has two homes remaining for sale (although one is not suited to an RV).
Each house is owned by the occupants. There is no ‘licence to occupy’ so the owners get all the benefits of capital gain on their property and the body corporate costs are minimal.
This is the structure I wanted and all the village owners share that view. A very satisfying aspect of Hauraki Village has been to see the interaction of the owners. They are a vibrant lot and all active – walking, biking and RV interests seem to be the most common denominators.
About 80 percent of the village owners have RVs which vary in size from a fifth-wheeler to a two-person caravan. At any one time many are away in their RV or travelling overseas. The residents are very good at keeping an eye out for each other by collecting mail and watering plants when owners are away.”
Visit haurakivillage.co.nz
