St Heliers by the Sea

The Big New Zealand Town Search

As previously mentioned, after time away in Asia, my husband Fred and I are returning to New Zealand. After ten years of short-term rentals and lots of exciting travel, we are thrilled to purchase a home and put down roots.

New Zealand is a relatively small, sharing the same surface area as Colorado. The largest cities are Auckland (where we lived for 5 years and where our son has settled), Wellington (home of The Flight of the Conchords* and oh yeah also the capital), and Christchurch (you may recall the horrible earthquake of 2011). Auckland, by far the largest, is also the most expensive. Also: ridiculous traffic.

Thankfully there are tons of other charming, wonderful places to live in New Zealand, ranging from small cities to tiny towns, all of which are infinitely more affordable than Auckland. Our mission: find an affordable home in a town comparable to St Heliers, the gorgeous Auckland suburb we called home from 2015-2020.

St Heliers

Situated on a gorgeous, swimmable bay with a lovely white-sand beach, the tiny town of St Heliers had everything I needed, all within walking distance from my front door: cafes, boutiques, a very classy second-hand store, dentist, doctor, and other medial services, bank, hardware store, suprette… you name it, St Heliers has it!

Criteria

Fred devised a ranking system for all of the New Zealand towns we planned to visit. In a nutshell, we were comparing all other places against St Heliers.

Fancy a Walk?

For me, the most important criteria was walkability. I love to walk and am on a personal mission to drive as infrequently as possible. Besides walking to perform daily errands, St Heliers Bay offers a gorgeous, dedicated ocean-side walkway all the way to Auckland Central, passing several similarly gorgeous towns, each on a bay of its own, along the way. In other words: my personal paradise. We weren’t sure we could find anything close, but hey—you never know until you try.

In future weeks I’ll share our rankings for each of the many New Zealand towns we visited. Spoiler: We have found a new home town, and a house! Stay tuned!

Any questions about expatriating, or moving to (or even just visiting) New Zealand? Drop them in the comments below! :o)

*If you don’t know The Flight of the Conchords, you are missing out. They are a funny musical duo. Do look them up.