Hobsonville Point, formerly the location of the Royal New Zealand Air Force’s airfield, Hobsonville Airbase, is currently being redeveloped as a new suburb of Auckland. Hobsonville Village next to Hobsonville Point is also being developed by Auckland Council, and the area known as Hobsonville Corridor joins the peninsula with Westgate, a new regional town being created by the council. The peninsula is joined by the North Western Motorway and State Highway 16 in the west and the Hobsonville Peninsula and Upper Harbour Bridge in the east. Willis Bond successfully acquired the rights to develop the 4.7 hectare Sunderland A Block in 2013. It engaged with Studio Pacific Architecture to develop the site into a neighborhood with approximately 210 dwellings of varying typologies; 190 new homes and 19 fully refurbished former Air Force homes from the 1930s. Since November 2014, four stages of homes have been released for sale and the first 35 families have now moved into their Sunderland homes; the final residences are now under construction.

       Problems of unoccupied homes in the area has suffered squatters and drug users, causing significant disruptions in the daily life of neighbors. Some of these houses are suspected to be held by foreign investors, but the majority are held by local investors who is expecting a return on profit in a short amount of time, and thus do not want to find a tenant and has a hassle when selling. Hobsonville East area unit had 363 occupied dwellings, 120 unoccupied, and another 18 under construction. That construction figure seems implausibly low, so my guess is that many of the “unoccupied” homes hadn’t actually been completed and certified yet, even if they looked habitable.

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