Parking and Facilities

Shared facilities are easy to overlook when looking at an apartment, and hard to change later. In a waterfront building the usual questions come with a coastal twist.

Cars. Space on a wharf or a reclaimed site is tight, so parking is often tucked under the building or below the deck. Carparks in these positions can be damp and exposed to salt air, which is hard on vehicles and on the structure itself. Ventilation, drainage and the condition of concrete and steel in the carpark are worth noticing. In unit title buildings, a car park may be part of a unit, a separate accessory unit or common property with allocated use, and that difference matters for ownership and costs.

Bikes. Wellington’s central city is compact and much of the waterfront is flat, so bikes are a practical way to get about, wind permitting. Secure, covered storage near the entrance is far more useful than racks in a corner of the carpark, and a place to rinse salt and grit off a bike helps it last. Wellington City Council’s cycling pages cover routes and bike parking around the city.

Storage. Apartments rarely have enough of it. Storage lockers, if any, are usually allocated by the body corporate or attached to particular units. Kayaks, paddleboards and dive gear are common on the harbour, and rules about where they can be kept vary from building to building.

Rubbish and recycling. Bin rooms need to be enclosed and secure against the wind, or the waterfront ends up wearing the building’s recycling.

How these facilities are managed is set by the body corporate and its operational rules. The resident services page has more, and unittitles.govt.nz explains how unit title ownership works.