Onetangi Beach on Waiheke Island. Residents have received a fast revaluation service from the council relative to other areas in Auckland. Photo / Michael Craig
When Auckland’s new property valuations were released in June, owners had seven weeks to object if they believed their home’s valuation was incorrect.
There are 630,000 Auckland properties, and the owners of 10,500 of them challenged their new valuations.
With only 1000 processed to date, more than 90% are still waiting for a decision.
Luxon’s Wellington allowance
While Luxon wouldn’t comment in this case, he did comment last year in a case with parallels.
In March 2024, he came under fire for being the first Prime Minister in 34 years to claim an 11% top-up to his $471,000 salary in the form of a $52,000 optional allowance for accommodation in Wellington.
He already owned his own apartment in Wellington and could also have lived in Premier House for free, as Auckland-based Prime Ministers had done before him.
The timing was awkward because his Government was, at the time, asking most ministries to find at least 6.5% in savings.
At the time, he told the Herald through a spokesperson that he was “claiming an accommodation allowance on his Wellington apartment in accordance with the rules”.
Onetangi: An objection ‘hotspot’
While there is no suggestion that the Luxons have broken any rules in relation to their Waiheke home, the residents of Onetangi have received a faster service from the council than most other areas in Auckland.
Rhonwen Heath, Auckland Council’s head of rates, valuations and data management, told the Herald that’s because when objections came in, her team looked across Auckland for “hotspots”.
They noticed “a particularly high concentration of rating valuation queries from Onetangi”, she said.
The Onetangi beachfront has about 120 multimillion-dollar properties located on it. In June, 19 of them were worth $10m or higher, and the most expensive was valued at $12.5m.
The 120 would have paid a combined $2.4m annually in rates.
Instead, the owners of 47 of the properties – including the Prime Minister’s – lodged valuation objections.
Under the council process, each property had to lodge its own separate objection and each received a personal visit from a council-appointed valuer. All 47 objections were successful, quickly receiving lower valuations.
The decreases ranged from $900,000 to $5.8m for a property originally valued at $12.5m.
The owner of that property had their rates bill halved from $27,000 to $13,600 per year.
These decreases meant a reduced rates take for the council of $281,000 across the 47 properties.
Auckland Council rates are used to pay for shared services like public libraries, parks, waste management, community events, roading and transport.
In the whole of Auckland so far, only 211 properties have had their values decreased, and 47 of those are in Onetangi.
In an unusual step, the council has advised the owners of the 70-odd remaining Onetangi beachfront properties – where no objections were lodged – that it “may make changes to their property’s rating valuation to ensure a consistent approach” and the council is still working through that process.
Onetangi Beach on Waiheke Island. In the whole of Auckland so far, only 211 properties have had their values decreased – and 47 of those are in Onetangi.
What about the rest of Auckland?
Heath told the Herald there is only one other potential hotspot – one street in Warkworth with about 40 houses on it that the council was not ready to name.
“We are at the early stages of looking into the issue and will be communicating next steps with affected ratepayers shortly,” she said.
When asked why the Onetangi properties were processed so early, Heath said it was “based on resources and the availability of a valuer with specific expertise in that location”.
She said a small number of sales in Onetangi “not representative of the market” had inflated values in the area.
Valuers had now looked more broadly at values across Waiheke and earlier trends for Onetangi, she said.
Chris Knox is a scientist turned data-journalist who investigates the stories behind the numbers, and creates interactives for Herald readers to explore them.