Mangawhai Hills is a masterplanned community on the Northland coast, designed as one connected place rather than a set of sections for sale. Homes, trails, wetlands, green space, community facilities and shops are all planned together, so the whole thing works as a lifestyle rather than an address.

A subdivision divides land into lots and sells them. A masterplanned community is designed as a whole from the beginning.

That means the roads, the planting, the trails, the water and power systems and the community spaces are all designed to work together, and the standards that protect them are in place before the first home is built. The result is somewhere that still feels considered in twenty years, not just on settlement day.

No, and that's a deliberate choice.

Gated communities are often less private than they look. Every visitor and every delivery passes a checkpoint, friends can't simply drop by, and the running costs are carried by residents for the life of the community.

We'd rather be open. Our trails and public spaces are there for the wider Mangawhai community to enjoy alongside you. The facilities built specifically for residents are access-controlled, so you still have spaces that are yours.

Four kinds of ownership sit across the site.

Once the bush and wetland areas have been restored, they will be vested in a charitable trust, the Mangawhai Hills Trust. The Trust looks after those areas permanently: the bush, the wetlands and the trails through them.

Because the Trust has charitable status, it can accept donations to fund the ongoing care of the land.

Dogs are welcome, provided they aren't a nuisance to your neighbours.

Livestock, including chickens, pigs and sheep, aren't permitted.

Out of sight from the street. Boats and motorhomes can't be stored anywhere visible to others, and the Residents Association enforces this.

Some lots are designed with larger garaging for exactly this reason. In later stages we intend to provide a community boat and motorhome storage facility.

Build ready. Every lot is levelled, compacted and certified by a geotechnical engineer, ready for a standard ribraft concrete slab.

Quite a lot of the work that would normally land on you. Before you build, we provide:

• A levelled, geotech-certified building platform
• The road crossing and driveway to your boundary
• Post and wire netting fencing to your side and rear boundaries, with landscaping planted alongside it
• Streetscape and front yard planting, designed and built by us
• A concrete water tank, supplied and installed underground
• A primary wastewater treatment tank
• High-speed fibre at your boundary
• Three-phase power to the lot

These are your Vendor Works. They're a fixed cost, set out in your Sale and Purchase Agreement, and payable when the land settles.

It's the cost of the work we do on your lot before you build. On a standard lifestyle section you'd arrange and pay for most of this yourself, in whatever order your builder could manage it.

We do it upfront, to one standard, across the whole community. The cost is fixed, disclosed in your agreement, and charged when your land settles.

Before your lot settles, we install post and wire netting fencing along your side and rear boundaries, then plant landscaping alongside it. As the planting grows, the fencing disappears into it.

We also design and build the streetscape and the front yard planting, and the Residents Association maintains those front yards permanently.

You can add discrete fencing between your house and the side boundary, with the design approved by the Design Review Board.

A tank, like every property in Mangawhai. There's no reticulated water supply in the area.

The difference here is that tanks are concrete and fully buried. Above-ground tanks are a familiar sight around Mangawhai, usually because low-lying sites have groundwater too close to the surface to bury them. Every site at Mangawhai Hills is elevated, so burying is possible, and our design standards require it.

We supply and install the tank, working in with your builder as your house design is finalised.

Yes. High-speed fibre runs to the boundary of every lot, despite the semi-rural setting.

We have our own treatment system, separate from the Mangawhai Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Each lot has a primary treatment tank of around 4,000 litres. A low-pressure pipeline carries that primary-treated effluent to a secondary community treatment plant. After further treatment, the near-clean liquid is trickled onto a large planted bushland area.

The system is supplied by Innoflow and is the same design used at Jacks Point in Queenstown, a community of similar size. It has been peer reviewed and approved by both Northland Regional Council and Kaipara District Council, and we install the whole system.

Stormwater is handled in three ways.

Cleaning. We use New Zealand best-practice treatment so the water leaving the site is cleaner after development than it was before, and sediment doesn't reach the Mangawhai estuary. Sediment control during earthworks meets best practice and exceeds Council standards.

Attenuation. A series of ponds through the masterplan buffers peak flows, holding far more floodwater in the valley than the land could before.

Levels. The contours and the valley and wetland network let us plan every neighbourhood so that house platforms sit well above even a one-in-500-year storm event.

The International Living Future Institute defines regenerative design as building environments that actively contribute to ecological and social wellbeing, rather than simply doing less harm. In practice that means systems that are self-sustaining, connected and resilient, like the ecosystems around them.

For us it comes down to one test: the land should be healthier after we've finished than it was before we started.

We're aiming to go further than neutral, and to do it here rather than elsewhere.

Many developments reach carbon neutrality by offsetting: buying a forest block somewhere else and counting its sequestered carbon against emissions on site. We're aiming to sequester more carbon on this land each year than the community emits, through the native bush, the extensive new planting and the clean energy we generate here.

Because the integration is the point.

None of the individual pieces is unique. Buried tanks, community wastewater, solar microgrids and stormwater attenuation all exist in masterplanned communities internationally. What makes Mangawhai Hills unique is that they're designed to work together from the start.

That only works if one party takes responsibility for installing all of it to one standard, so we do, and the cost is charged to each lot as a fixed Vendor Works Cost at settlement.

We're building a solar microgrid.

Mangawhai's climate suits solar well. The part that's harder, and the part we've spent two years designing with Northpower and our energy consultants, is capturing that generation centrally so the whole community benefits, rather than leaving each house to fend for itself.

One high-voltage cable enters the property. From there, a high-voltage ring main runs through the site with step-down transformers, and low-voltage ring mains deliver three-phase power to every lot.

Nothing upfront. We pay for and install the solar panels, the inverters, the battery systems, the microgrid and the three-phase supply to your lot.

Those assets are owned and maintained by the Mangawhai Hills Power Company, which is also responsible for replacing the equipment over time.

Rates competitive with what's available elsewhere in Mangawhai. That's an obligation written into the agreement, not just an intention, and there's an annual process behind it:

1. By 31 January, we publish two options with costs, based on the lowest retail rates available in Mangawhai. One for permanent residents, one for occasional residents.
2. By 14 February, you can come back to us with a more competitive rate you've found locally.
3. By 28 February, we confirm the two options that will apply from 1 April to 31 March the following year.

You choose which option suits your household. If you don't tell us, we carry over the closest match to your previous year.

Our initial retail partner is Octopus Energy, one of the world's leading green energy retailers, on a two-year contract. Octopus bills you directly for your own use, and every home has a smart meter so you can take advantage of time-of-use pricing.

Two things.

Roof. A minimum of 50m² of roof within 45 degrees of north, kept available permanently for solar panels.

Plant space. An area for the batteries and inverter, inside or outside, in a location agreed with us.

Your architect or designer should know both of these before they start.

You keep your power on.

We stay connected to the Northpower grid, importing when solar production or battery storage runs low, and exporting back at times of peak demand. But if there's a wider outage, we isolate the community from the grid. It's called islanding, and it means Mangawhai Hills keeps a resilient 24/7 supply while the surrounding network is down.

You keep the equipment. In the unlikely event that the Mangawhai Hills Power Company were to fail, ownership of the solar equipment on your house reverts to you, and your property connects directly to the Northpower grid as an independent solar home.

Once around 15 to 20 houses are complete. At that point we install solar panels on each completed home along with a battery system, combining batteries at individual houses with larger community-scale battery storage.

Before that milestone, homes connect to the Northpower network and are supplied at the lowest market rate, billed through Octopus Energy.

Yes. Every property is supplied by the Mangawhai Hills Power Company, and that obligation sits with the property permanently. The annual rate-setting process described above is how we keep that fair.

Mangawhai Hills is a nature-led place, so the focus is on opening up the site itself: a large network of bush trails, gravel trails and paved paths through the parts of the land most people never get to see.

Alongside that we intend to provide community-scale cafés, restaurants and boutique shops. As the community grows, we'll look to add recreational and pool facilities for residents.

The trails, cafés, restaurants and shops are open to everyone, including the wider Mangawhai community. The recreational facilities built for residents are private, and access-controlled.

Three kinds, each with a different purpose.

Bush trails. Well-formed new trails through the existing bush, including a 3.6km Loop Trail that circles the lower and upper edge of the main bush, with connecting trails running up and down to it. These are for walking and running. Bikes aren't permitted.

Gravel trails. Around 1.5m wide and well formed. Mainly for walking and running, with bikes welcome as long as they give way to people on foot.

Paved paths. A range of widths for walking and cycling, including 3m shared paths alongside the main roads.

We pay the capital cost of building them.

Afterwards, the community facilities are managed by the Residents Association, and the bush and wetland areas are cared for by the charitable trust.

Yes. We know most people don't enjoy being told what they can build. We also know those same people want certainty about what their neighbours can build.

That's what the guidelines are for. They set a high standard across the community, and in doing so they protect the value of every home in it, including yours.

The Design Review Board reviews house designs before they're built, to make sure they meet the standard the community is designed to.

Its role continues after you move in. The Board considers proposed changes to your house and fencing, and applies the landscaping controls and height covenants.

The covenants are set out in the Design Guidelines document. They're registered on every lot title and are enforceable by the Residents Association and the Design Review Board.

You can nominate a builder of your choice, although all builders need to be accredited by us and the Design Review Board. That's how the standard is held across the whole community rather than house by house.

Each stage of the development has its own timeframes for starting and completing a house, set out in the Design Guidelines. Your agreement will tell you which apply to your lot.

No. Maximum height limits are registered as covenants on every lot, specifically to protect the views and outlook of surrounding properties permanently.

Yes. Anyone can buy a lot from us. What comes with it is the obligation to follow the Design Guidelines, which are rigorously enforced.

The Mangawhai Hills Residents Association exists to look after the interests of everyone living here, and to run the parts of the community that are shared.

Its responsibilities are:

• Ongoing landscape maintenance of road reserve planting, parks and trails
• Maintaining the wastewater treatment plant and system
• Making sure residents stick to the agreed rules and covenants
• Managing and maintaining the community facilities

Every property belongs to the Association, permanently.

We do, at first. For the first five years the Association is managed by Mangawhai Hills Limited, which lets early residents settle in without having to run the place while it's still being built.

Over time, owners become more involved, and eventually take over running it themselves.

When a property here sells, 1% of the sale price is paid to the Residents Association on settlement. On a $1.5m sale, that's $15,000.

It's payable only if the seller doesn't immediately buy another property within Mangawhai Hills.

The levy is what funds the Association long term, so that the community's shared spaces are looked after by the community itself rather than by an annual bill that keeps climbing.

Not for at least the first five years after the Stage 1 titles are released. During that period, if the Association's income doesn't cover its costs, we underwrite the shortfall.

Buying at Mangawhai Hills is designed to be a straightforward process, with the sales team available to guide you through each stage.

1. Register your interest
   Get in touch with the Mangawhai Hills sales team to register your interest and discuss what you’re looking for.
2. Explore Mangawhai Hills
   Take the time to understand the development, including the overall vision, features, amenities, location and lifestyle benefits.
3. Shortlist your preferred Lot or home
   Work with the sales team to identify your preferred Lot or site and explore the available build options, whether you’re looking to purchase land or a house and land package.
4. Select your Lot or house and land package
   Once you’ve found the right option, the sales team will help you through the process of selecting your preferred Lot or package and preparing a conditional sale and purchase agreement.
5. Complete your due diligence
   During the conditional period, you can have your lawyer, accountant and other advisers review the project, the Lot and the sale and purchase agreement.
6. Go unconditional
   Once you’re satisfied with your due diligence and any conditions have been met, you can proceed to an unconditional contract and pay your deposit.
7. Start planning your home
   If you’ve purchased land, you can engage a builder to design and build your home. If you’ve purchased a house and land package, you can either purchase a completed or part-completed home, or work with the builder to complete the home.

A standard ADLS 11th edition Sale and Purchase Agreement, with some clauses removed and Further Terms added.

The first two pages cover everything specific to your lot and your purchase. From page three onwards, the agreement is identical for every purchaser.

Three sit with the property permanently, and pass to whoever owns it next:

• Membership of the Residents Association
• Electricity supplied by the Mangawhai Hills Power Company, on the annual rate-setting basis described above
• The design guidelines, covenants and maximum height limits registered on your title

The Vendor Works, at a fixed cost set out in your agreement and payable at settlement. These are the works described under Land and lots: the building platform, driveway, fencing, landscaping, water tank, wastewater tank, fibre and power.

The 1% Transfer Levy applies when you sell, not when you buy.