Swinton Close

Remuera, Auckland 1050

The house is situated towards the end of a private lane and is super quiet, peaceful and secure. We know most of the neighbours.

The location is premium and comes with a premium. There’s two rental properties more or less the same as ours either side of us that are rented for $120 per room more than our rent. We get the cheaper rent because I’ve been living here for over 15 years now and have a good relationship with the landlord. They’ve retired and I do most of the general maintenance work myself. It’s a stable flat with the current flatmate being here for 1.5 years and the flattie moving out doing so as quit university to travel and work overseas.

The house itself has gorgeous, sunny with unobstructed, 180 degree west facing views, so we get awesome sunsets from the lounge, kitchen and deck. Views extend to Sky Tower, Auckland Museum and the Metropolis. There’s 3 deck/outdoor areas that can be enjoyed all year round, which includes a “Zen garden” to time out in and relax. A large lounge and dining area makes for enjoyable socialising, while all bedrooms are in separate corners of the house ensuring complete privacy when you want your own space. The only house rules are a weekly cleaning roster and keeping the common areas clean and tidy.

The location is also a few minutes away from the Newmarket mall and really close to the motorway on and off ramps. Cornwall Park and the Domain are nearby.

The bedroom available catches the sun in the afternoon, is warm and large sized, being 3.4m wide and 3.7m long (including large full width built-in wardrobe). It’s easily able to fit a queen bed, drawers and desk. It has a shared bathroom. New carpet was installed last year. There’s currently a bed and desk in there if anyone wants them from previous flattie.

Generally, we’re polite, friendly, relaxed, positive, clean and tidy. It’s a quiet, mature place rather than a social hub, but we’re social when the occasion arises.

I’m the head tenant, in my 50s but feel younger as never been married and have no children, just my dog Mojo, and have yet to launch my own business too. I’ve been living here since I sold my apartment in 2008 to fund my business start-up. My career was in corporate transformation, but I quit that a while ago now to work on a project that keeps on getting bigger and bigger. It’s truly global now. I work from home with my work now involved with “waking” people up. This means two things. First, waking people up that something is seriously broken in the world and only getting worse. Second, the answer to this is beyond simply political and economic, but to power people up to a whole new reality, wake them up to the spiritual reality of life, to living consciously.

The other flatmate is Leo who is 30 and over from China trying to get residency. He’s well-travelled and just finished his masters degree last year.