Our local rag…er…shining example of journalistic excellence…er…rag, the Mainzer Allgemeine Zeitung never ceases to amaze me.

Open the paper this morning, scan past an appallingly bad journalistic effort by Stefanie Widman (who works out that 8 divided by 47 is less than 10% and that the average price of locally produced white wine is €13/litre – at which my bullshit deflectors deploy automatically, but more on that later) to the travel section and stumble over a WHOLE PAGE on Devonport, a seaside suburb on Auckland’s North Shore which we know quite (actually, very…) well.

I mean, the place is a (fairly) well-kept secret in Auckland itself, let alone the rest of NZ. And it pops up HERE under the headline “Picture-perfect wooden houses and seaside chic”?

Which is absolutely true.

We looked at buying a place there (picture-perfect wooden house for around $220k – pretty much the going rate back then, probably $800k >$975k according to the valuation these days)  just around the corner from Robby and Houghton) yonks ago when we were toying with the idea of moving back when Air New Zealand offered me a job.

Not sure about all of it, though.

A bit like Long Island without the house prices, it says.

How about this place for a mere $1.9m, then?

Or 2 beds/2 baths for $4.35m…