Te Awanga Terraces

Te Awanga is the part of Hawke's Bay people quietly hope to end up in — a seaside village between the Tukituki river mouth and Cape Kidnappers, surrounded by some of the region's best-known wineries, and still only a 15 to 20 minute drive from Hastings, Havelock North or Napier. It works as a permanent address and as a holiday one, which is a rare combination.

What makes the Terraces different from most coastal land is that it was actually planned. The sites are terraced platforms rather than raw contour, all 44 titles have been issued, and the development carries its own reserve areas plus an all-weather tennis court, a basketball half court and an all-weather cricket wicket and practice net. The Clifton Cricket Ground — one of the more scenic grounds in the country — sits directly behind it.

Section sizes here are generous by current standards, so the designs that suit are the ones with room to spread out and open properly to the sun and the outlook. Arrowtown and Cromwell both make sense on the larger elevated lots, while Te Anau is a well-planned four-bedroom option that leaves more of the section as garden. On a site like this the real design work is deciding what you orient to — the sea view, the northerly sun, or the shelter — and that's a conversation worth having on the section itself.

Te Awanga Terraces has sensible covenants in place to protect the streetscape and your investment — the developer publishes the covenant documents alongside each section, and we go through the ones attached to your specific lot before we finalise a design.

Two things set this development apart from a standard flat subdivision, and both are worth understanding early. It is one of the first large-scale developments in Hawke's Bay to be solar and battery powered while staying on grid, and it uses an offsite, council-owned sewerage treatment solution rather than on-site septic. Neither changes how a fixed-price build works, but they do shape the services design for your home, so we factor them in at the pricing stage rather than discovering them later.

The other consideration is the coast itself. Salt and wind exposure influence cladding, fixings, joinery and coating selections, and those choices belong in the specification before you sign, not in a variation afterwards.