The winner of a $1 reserve auction can’t believe his luck that he might be camping on his Coromandel waterfront property by Christmas after securing his new home away from home for $375,000 at the weekend.
The Thornton Bay section, once cleared of its slip-damaged home, will also provide the perfect writing spot for the self-published author who plans to finish his second book there this summer.
Coromandel locals Jonathan and Kathy Peet were among the first to hear of the unusual Thornton Bay listing when it hit the market last month and knew immediately that the massive project was something they wanted to take on.
The retired dairy farmers live in Hikuai and had been looking for a bare section along the Thames Coast for several months. They had already missed out on one section in a new subdivision in Ngarimu Heights that ended up being over their budget and had too many covenants.
Start your property search
So, when Harcourts listing agent Steven Bridson got in touch to tell him about his waterfront listing with a catch they looked at it immediately.
The house had been knocked off its foundations from a slip behind the property when extreme weather struck the Coromandel over Auckland Anniversary weekend. The house was red-stickered and its elderly owner Dennis Raines was evacuated from his house of 27 years. The insurance payout was not enough to cover the rebuild so he put the house up for auction with a $1 reserve.
Read more:
- Beach town cottage for sale for first time in more than a century
- 'Classic' pink bach sells for just over $1m
- ‘It’s crazy’: Off-grid home in the Coromandel a magnet for foreign buyers
Peet said they were not afraid of taking on a restoration project and were happy to get stuck in and clear the site.
“It didn’t phase us at all. We thought this is a great opportunity if we get it at the right price.”
But as the auction date drew closer they started to get nervous about their chance of winning.
“In reality, I didn’t think we were going to get it. There were that many people stopping and looking at it, driving past, getting out [and] taking photos. I just thought we were going to get blown out of the water. We didn’t have any great hopes at all that we were going to win the auction and there you go, we won it. You’ve got to be in to win, you just never know with an auction.”
Some 40 bids were made during the 10-minute-long auction with just four bidders left fighting for it once it reached $131,000.
The couple had tough competition with 40 people registered to bid at Saturday's auction. Photo / Supplied
Work will start on clearing the site within the next few weeks and the couple hope to have a caravan parked on it by Christmas. Photo / Supplied
There were 43 registered bidders, but only 12 people managed to get their hands up to place a bid and there were several times when the underbidder made some small last-minute bids just as the hammer was about to go down. The final sale price was $375,000 won by, who at the time was referred to as, bidder number four.
Peet has already lined up a contractor to remove the broken home from the site once the property settles next week. The sheds at the front of the property that were untouched by the slip will remain onsite.
The couple hopes the site will be cleared enough so they can park a caravan at the front of the section this summer.
Peet is also halfway through writing a loose sequel to his first self-published historical novel Wairata and plans to finish it with the waves humming in the background.
Their long-term plan is to put a tiny home on the site and live in it during their retirement.
“We will sit there and watch the sunsets and enjoy our sunset years.”
The couple have a pattern of buying troubled properties with their first being a pair of derelict farms that they returned to dairying and later sold.
In 2018, they spotted an abandoned property in Eltham, in South Canterbury, for sale online and bought it for $110,000 without even viewing it. They instead relied on a video walk-through and a raft of photos from the agent.
The cottage was completely surrounded by rubbish so they drove down with a trailer and spent six weeks cleaning up the property. After six weeks of working on the property they had found a tenant who has been living there ever since, he added.
“As part of farming you just know a job needs to get done and you get stuck in and do it one bit at a time until it’s finished and that’s always been my philosophy. You see something that needs doing and you do it. When we saw that place (Thames Coast Road) it didn’t faze us at all, we thought it needs to be cleaned up and somebody is going to do it, it may as well be us.”
- Click here to find more properties for sale in Thames-Coromandel
