As trophy houses go, Auckland's 542 Remuera Road is hard to beat.
The stately mansion made headlines around the country in 2018 when it sold for $25.5 million, a record for that year that remains unbeaten this.
The sellers, developers Paula and Simon Herbert, had combined a property at number 538 with the original 900 sq m Roy Binney-designed 1920s mansion to create great a whopping 6105 sq m estate and given the house a top to toe makeover.
The house made headlines in the 1980s when richlister David Richwhite, synonymous with that decade’s share market, paid $8m for it. Its first owner was an even more prominent businesswoman, Amy Hellaby who ran the family meat business, the country’s largest private employer of the time.
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Properties like this rarely come to market, says Bayleys’ David Rainbow, who first started selling in the area in the 1980s. He points to the buyers of his first $1m sale, a property on Paratai Drive, who stayed in the new house they built there for 28 years until Rainbow sold it just two years ago for $9.2m.
“Remuera is good and stable, it’s always tightly held.
“There are people still living [in their houses] 25 years later. They are waiting for the next generation, they don’t need to sell now, so they don’t come on the market.”
The Victorian mansion Fairholm at 282 Remuera Rd made records in the late 1980s when it sold for $4m and again in 2001, when it was the first house to ask $10m. It had a complete makeover, including an indoor pool, before going back on the market in 2012, asking over $17m. Photo / file
Some of these houses make legends – or house them. In the 1890s mansion Fairholm at 282 Remuera Rd achieved the country’s top price back in the late 1980s at $4m. It made another first in 2001, when it was the first property in the country to ask $10m. It sold two years later for $8.4m and, after extensive renovations by property developer Peter Turner, was back on the market in 2008 looking for “upwards of $17m”. It now has a CV of $22m.
Expat buyers, not foreigners
Despite the queues for some trophy homes, OneRoof editor Owen Vaughan says sales of top end properties in 2019 have been dented by the overseas buyer ban and uncertainty in the housing market in general.
“There have been fewer $5 million sales this year, and some luxury homes have sat on the market unsold – either because of vendor price expectations or a smaller pool of buyers,” he says.
Vaughan says that returning Kiwi expats are driving the top end of the market right now, and that buyer group has fixed ideas about what constitutes a trophy home. “Those luxury properties that can also offer the dream Kiwi lifestyle will be hotly contested.”
Luxury real estate agent Graham Wall agrees with Rainbow that when people do buy they tend to stay 20 years.
Wall is finding foreign buyers have been replaced by expats who are coming back and falling for Auckland’s really plush homes.
While $10m-$20m homes are taking longer to sell than two years ago, plenty of people are considering them all the time, Wall says.
“The most recent buyers of very high value property in New Zealand, half of them have been Kiwis returning, particularly Kiwis returning from Hong Kong - we’ve done several transactions with New Zealanders coming back from Hong Kong.”
These expats aren’t famous but they are rich, Wall says.
“That’s the new market. The old market was just people trading up in Auckland and, I guess, people having a bit of luck and buying a bigger house, and a smattering of foreign buyers.
“Foreign buyers only ever made up a very tiny percentage but they were the sort of wild cards - the crazy prices.”
People with the money to buy a $15m house also think nothing of spending another $5m on a total renovation, from top to bottom including a new pool, Wall says. Because mansions turn over so rarely, what was luxury 20 year ago is dated now.
James Wilson, Valocity’s director of valuation innovation, say that the demand dynamics at play in the luxury market are very different from those of the rest of the housing market.
“The luxury property market is influenced more by international drivers such as the strength and confidence levels within the global economy.
“So while we’ve seen softer housing market conditions in some of our main cities, the luxury property market in these same areas may actually still be strong.”
Michael Boulgaris, who also sells in the top end luxury market, says big homes can take six months-plus to sell.
Buyers sit and wait for the right home, sometimes for several years, he says.
But while he gets a lot of emails from expats doing their homework on homes, he says they are not buying.
“They generally say from a world perspective they think Auckland prices are too expensive, and we are one of the highest prices in the world.”
Real estate agent Michael Boulgaris says that buyers of this property in Garden Rd, with a CV of over $25m will most likely renovate it. Photo / supplied
He sees many buyers of big mansions that are Kiwi upgraders who might have had a $5m home in Remuera for ten years which has increased in value three or fourfold so they sell it, get a mortgage and buy a $10m home. He too says that buyers, after spending over $20m would still expect to do a renovation as previous owners could have been there 20 years or more.
Boulgaris says you will sometimes find big properties spanning more than one address as owners to buy next door neighbour’s house if they want more land for gardens or a tennis court.
It’s not just the heritage houses that await the right buyer.
Renovations required
Among the luxury listings of Barfoot & Thompson agent Leila MacDonald is 57 Portland Road, Remuera, owned by former Saatchi & Saatchi global CEO Kevin Roberts.
This luxury pad, on a 3565sq m site and with a CV of $12.5m, has been on the market since earlier this year but MacDonald says Roberts loves the house and is content to wait for the right buyer.
The eclectic five bedroom house sprawls across three levels and a new owner may renovate the entire house, MacDonald says.
“It’s very much out there, if you know what I mean. It’s very much Kevin. Somebody might buy it and change the whole thing because you’ve got a magnificent piece of land.”
MacDonald says sometimes owners don’t want publicity so she has a few “secret” $10m-plus listings where people have said “Leila, if you’ve got somebody we’ll look at it”.
She hasn’t seen many expats buying but says there are more younger buyers - in their 30s and 40s - out there with a lot of money who want big homes.
- additional reporting Catherine Masters
