A property in Auckland’s inner city suburb of Grey Lynn, measuring just 3.66m wide, may become the country’s tiniest house sale ever.
The 33sqm plot of land at 1A Tuarangi Road, just around the corner from the Grey Lynn shops on Great North Road and Williamson Avenue, currently holds a turn of last century 9sqm brick shed that once housed a pumping station for Auckland Gas Company.
Owners Cameron Woodcock and Gavin Hurley – Woodcock owns Ponsonby treasure trove Flotsam and Jetsam, Hurley is a well-known artist – had always admired the tiny plot and managed to buy it in 2017 – for $268,900. The previous owners, who lived in a villa across the road, had owned it for 20 or 30 years, before heading overseas.
Woodcock told OneRoof: “We always loved this tiny pocket piece of land, we love the location.
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“We always intended to build there. If you go up three storeys you can see the Waitakere Ranges, and we loved the challenge of designing around the pumphouse."
The 9sqm shed was the pumping station for Auckland Gas Company, and sits just around the corner from the Grey Lynn shops. Photo / Supplied
The plans for the site would be worthy of a Grand Designs story.
Referencing the Sky Box, a tiny house in Wellington suspended above a downtown factory building, and the couple’s brief for a spiral staircase, a ground-floor retail/gallery space and a roof-top for views, architect Hamish Stirrat of Fabricate Architecture designed a tilt-slab concrete and glass home and gallery.
The consented design retains the façade and walls of the original shed, wrapping it in a ground floor glass box “display cabinet”, a bedroom and bathroom on the middle floor, living and kitchen on top and access to a roof-top terrace. The blank wall facing the busy street and bar was to be used for a changing roster of large-scale artworks – the architect’s renders show mega-scaled versions of the portraits Hurley is known for.
Concepts for the site include a ground floor gallery, two floors of living and a roof-top desk. Photo / Supplied
But the couple are now focusing on another out-of-town project in Whanganui – “you can’t really do everything” says Woodcock – and are selling their tiny plot.
Ray White agents Josh Powell and Jared Cooksley, who are asking for offers for the property by July 12, couldn’t be drawn into a discussion on what that might be. The property has a rating valuation of $185,000 and Cooksley said that a buyer might “want to make their own dreams” on the site.
The owners intended to keep some of the shed structure for a ground floor gallery, enclosing it in a glass box. Photo / Supplied
Woodcock and Hurley might take heart from tiny houses for sale in other big cities. London’s narrowest home, a 5ft 5in (1.65m)-wide three storey terrace in Shepherd’s Bush, was on the market 18 months ago asking £995,000 (just over $NZD1.9m), while New York’s famed Skinny House in Greenwich Village – measuring just under 2.9m wide – was asking just under US$5m (NZ$7.66m).
The site would have views to the Waitakere Ranges from the top floors. Photo / Supplied
Across the ditch, a famous four-storey home, just six metres wide with a pool and private beach in posh Darling Point sold for $AU15.5m (NZ$17m) in December.
And last year, an original 1860s cottage, on 92sqm at Tinakori Road, Wellington, sold for $835,000. The renovated three-room cottage, on the market for the first time since 1899, clocked in at just 44sqm and included a pocket garden.
1A Tuarangi Road, in Grey Lynn, Auckland, has a set sale date of July 12.
