Alex Inkersell admits she's never gone house-hunting. The two times she's bought real estate in New Zealand, the homes sought her out, not the other way round. In fact, both Auckland houses were near each other in an area she calls “my Mt Eden Square”.
The "square" is the Balmoral precinct bound by Dominion, Valley, Mt Eden and Balmoral roads and it is also where they’re moving to next.
In August 2013, Alex and her Kiwi husband Peter moved to 16 Henley Road from their first home in nearby Tenterden Avenue. A local real estate agent phoned them to tell them that the house was on the market and Alex remembered it vividly.
While on a visit from the UK to visit Peter’s family in Oamaru, they’d decided to see what Auckland might be like as a place to live. On their way back from Remuera, they drove through Mt Eden when, off Balmoral Road, they spotted a sign for Henley Street.
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Given that they were looking to buy a house back in England, in the town of Henley-on-Thames, they couldn’t resist a drive-by. “I remember seeing this house and thinking ‘this is a lovely area’,” says Alex. “This was the house that made me want to live in this area.”
It was enough to confirm their thoughts of emigrating. On their return to the UK, they went house-hunting online, buying their Tenterden Ave house, sight unseen, ahead of their permanent shift south.
Fast forward nine years, they got that agent’s call to say that there was a house in Henley Street that had come on the market. Alex found herself at auction with her youngest in her front pack, bidding for a house she never dreamt she’d own. “This house was pulling me back,” she says. “It was as if it was saying to me ‘You are going to have me’. Sometimes things fall into place for a reason. This is 100 per cent my spiritual home, I know I was really meant to live here.”
The timing was perfect for their children, now aged 12, 9 and 7. “The children cut their teeth here, they’ve ridden their bikes around the house – and where else can you do that? There is a cricket pitch at the back, a soccer goal at the front, they play tennis and handball down the driveway and there’s a fort in the back garden.”
The house at 16 Henley Street is being marketed by Robyn Ellson of Ray White.
Inside the 1910 return veranda villa here, there is still more that confirms Alex’s “meant-to-be” connection here. The ceiling dome in the sitting room/fourth bedroom matches the one in their previous home. “It was quite a rare style,” says Alex. The “crown” chandelier that hangs below is original. “It belongs to the house. It would be criminal to take it out,” she says.
Built on one level, the house is untouched except for the walls which they painted white to better showcase the natural timber. The original leadlight windows and the coloured tiles in the two fireplaces are just part of the original detailing leadlight windows are just part of the period detailing.
Alex and Peter, both professionals, were about to start extensions to the house to take their children into their teenage years when another “Mt Eden Square” house pulled them in.
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