From urban chic to student units. Aucklandís Inner City Residential Apartment Boom 1990-2003

Since the early 1990s Aucklandís Central Business District (CBD) has experienced an unprecedented growth in its residential apartment market. This growth is demonstrated in both the number of units developed (more than 7,000) and the increasing scale of individual apartment developments. Aucklandís inner-city apartment boom mirrors property trends occurring in other cities around the world. These trends are at the forefront of what Ley (1996) terms ëthe remaking of the central cityí and include processes of ëgentrificationí and urban regeneration. At first glance it would seem that Aucklandís apartment boom represents both a material and symbolic expression of a set of globalising processes of urban revitalisation. Yet, following Gibbs and Hoseliís (2003) recent call for greater attention to be given to local and spatial dimensions of property processes, this paper addresses the dynamics of the apartment boom and highlights the specificity of local market conditions. In order to examine the nature and character of processes operating in the apartment market, data were purchased from Quotable Value on individual apartment sales for the period 1990-2000. The resultant dataset provides information on 6,128 apartment sales with a cumulative gross sale value in excess of NZ$ 1billion. What follows is a preliminary analysis of the dataset and the findings should be treated as work in progress.