Sometimes a beautiful home has to wait for the right new owner. One of Dunedin’s historic homes, known as Bishopsgrove, is still waiting, although the agents marketing the property say there has been a recent flurry of interest.
The grand home at 16 Patmos Avenue was built by Dunedin’s first bishop, Samuel Tarrat Nevill, and sits on a 5ha-plus estate. It was first listed in 2019, and Joe Nidd, owner and principal of Nidd Realty, says it is one of the top properties in Dunedin.
He says the six-bedroom, three- bathroom mansion, which also has a gatehouse cottage, is simply “amazing”.
“You have to see it to believe it, it's absolutely stunning. It's a mansion on grounds that make it feel like a mansion.”
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The property’s unique qualities, and the $2.9m-plus price tag, mean agents have settled in for what could be a long haul. “It’s looking for a very unique buyer,” says Nidd. “They’re out there. You just have to wait for them to enter the market.
“You can’t rely on someone being there waiting for that sort of property. Often it’s the other way around; the property has to be there when they are ready to purchase.”
A sale at $2.9m would be a record for Dunedin. The biggest settled sale in the city in the last 12 months was of a stylish three-bedroom new-build home in Highgate, Belleknowes, which fetched $2.88m in November.
Bishopsgrove sits on a private 5ha estate and was built by the first bishop of Dunedin. Photo / Supplied
The house is Tudor in style and construction on top and Gothic on the bottom. Photo / Supplied
The numbers many seem small to Aucklanders, where high twos in sometimes not enough to get an entry level three-bedroom home in suburbs like Remuera or Ponsonby.
Nidd says his agency does get enquiries about Bishopsgrove from Aucklanders, some of whom are itching to sign on the dotted line, but he says this is not the kind of property to buy and hold. “You need to move into it and live in it,” he says.
Because of that, people have to look at where the opportunity for them is in Dunedin.
“Are they moving down here as a CEO? Are they bringing a business down here? What’s their purpose in being here?”
It’s only after those kinds of questions are answered that people then choose to buy this sort of property.
Often the discussion with a Aucklander goes like this, says Nidd: “They’ll say, ‘Value down there is incredible. I could sell my house and buy any property I wanted in Dunedin.’ And then we get talking and it's a matter of, you know, they're working at the top end of one of the banks or they've got 200 staff under them at a company and you can't move that necessarily.
“A big part of it is people being able to find those job opportunities in Dunedin, and they do exist, but often it takes time.”
The house is described as “one of New Zealand’s finest expressions of the Victorian passion for architectural eclecticism”. Photo / Supplied
The property has Category One Historic Places status. Photo / Supplied
The market for a property like Bishopsgrove is also narrow at the other end, where people are looking at retiring and may have a significant amount of money but they want low maintenance so are not looking for a large, character home.
“There's a kind of in between stage where you've got that age group where somebody is at the peak of their career, not close to retirement, and young and energetic enough to maintain a property like that,” Nidd says.
“It narrows the market up a bit and that's why it does take a bit of time.”
One of the agents marketing Bishopsgrove, Chris Taylor, says the property has Category One Historic Places status.
It was built for the first Anglican bishop of Dunedin in the 1880s and the entire external envelope of the house is protected so any changes would require approval.
Dunedin’s top sale of the last 12 months: a modern home that fetched $2.88m. Photo / Supplied
“The top story is Tudor essentially and Gothic is kind of the windows down at the bottom.
“Interestingly, the Tudor is not just decorative, it’s structural as well so when you go up into the roof cavity the timber is all the way through.
“I think in most buildings now it's purely decorative and just a wee strip of timber but this is solid, solid wood and it's amazing to see.”
There is decorative timberwork in the ceilings and some of the rooms still have felt wallpaper.
The home was used for a time as a bible college and Taylor says the current owners, who have lived there for several decades, brought the home back to its former glory.
They extended the kitchen and commissioned an Oamaru stone fireplace for the formal lounge.
Heritage New Zealand describes the property as “one of New Zealand’s finest expressions of the Victorian passion for architectural eclecticism.
For sale at a much lower price point: 18 Arnold Street, in North East Valley. Photo / Supplied
“It is likely the house was designed in England but it is appropriately sited in New Zealand’s most extant Victorian City.”
Nidd says trophy properties like this rarely come to the market and that the city’s median value sits in the more affordable $642,000 range. Prices are settling back to where they were 12 months ago, he says.
“There's no question there's been an adjustment in the market but what we found is that the increased stock levels have provided a relief valve for frustrated buyers who had given up and we're seeing people beginning to re-enter the market who had lost hope.”
At the beginning of this year, the CCCFA finance rules killed the first home buyer market which in turn meant second home buyers couldn’t move further up the market so the volume of properties available plummeted.
But where last year there were around 200 houses on the market, now there are around 600, giving a lot more choice.
“There is a little bit of a fresh energy in the first homebuyer market and an advantage Dunedin has with having a lower median sale price is that we have a lot more properties that are eligible for some of the Government assistance.
“Even on a pretty modest income you can still afford a property in Dunedin.”
At the opposite end of the spectrum to Bishopsgrove, Nidd’s is also marketing a two-bedroom property at 18 Arnold St, in North East Valley, for enquiries over $460,000.
“You could go in there and do a bathroom, a kitchen and some carpet and paint and you’d have a really nice little home and it’s relatively affordable – for $460,000 in many cities you wouldn’t even dream of getting a section for that.”
