A glass and steel mansion on one of Auckland’s wealthiest streets is for sale with expectations that it will fetch well over $22 million.
The listing agent for 13 Burwood Crescent, in Remuera, told OneRoof that the five-bedroom home had already attracted a lot of attention from top-end buyers within a week of hitting the market.
“This is without doubt the most beautiful contemporary home in all of Remuera, in Auckland even. This is the best,” Graham Wall, of Wall Real Estate, said.
This is the second time Wall has sold the designer mansion, which sits on a 1586sqm site overlooking Hobson Bay.
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He got $18m for it in March 2016, selling it to an American financier, just two years after it was built. At the time, it was 2016’s biggest sale, but the record was overtaken a month later by the $22m sale of Chateau de La Sur Me, on Clifton Road, in Takapuna, to Carmel and Hugh Fisher, of Fisher Funds.
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Wall thinks he’ll do better this time around. “The CV for 13 Burwood Crescent is $22m, but the price expectation is well in excess of that. When we sold it to these owners in 2016, $18m was a record for the street at the time.”
The house may well set the price record for 2023. The top settled sale this year so far is $20m for a country mansion in Whitford, on Auckland's eastern fringes, although OneRoof understands there maybe bigger deals in the pipeline.
“13 Burwood Crescent is a sensational house. It’s got an extraordinary kitchen, the travertine floors that lead out seamlessly to the deck that creates the outdoor living. The infinity pool then stretches out to views over Hobson Bay, with the boatsheds in the middle, the iconic Auckland view,” Wall says.
The mansion’s creator, architect Julian Guthrie says the original owners wanted a contemporary house for their family of then-teens, trusting him to create something outstanding.
The house has a bunker-like quality from the street, strong and solid, before opening to glass in the back. Photo / Supplied
The infinity pool draws the eye to iconic Auckland views of the boat sheds and Hobson Bay. Photo / Supplied
The kitchen has raw brass fixtures which have aged over time. Photo / Supplied
“I’d just designed their Omaha beach house. That was quite a timber, nautical palette so they wanted this to feel different. We settled early on the strength of the concrete relative to the walls of glass,” Guthrie says.
“It’s got a bunker-like quality from the street, strong and solid, then glass [in the back] open to the view. I’ve loved concrete since I started 30 years ago. It’s a homage to Japanese architect Tadao Ando and his beautiful homes.”
Guthrie says that apart from replacing bedroom carpets with oak flooring, the current owners have kept the house as it was. Visiting the house for only the second time since it changed hands, he says the raw brass detailing and hardware he added to kitchens and bathrooms have patinated beautifully, and the Humphrey Landscaping-designed tropical gardens have matured well. “It’s so beautiful to be back here.”
Dramatic double height stairs and a gallery in one of the living rooms. Photo / Supplied
Architect Julian Guthrie used a palette of concrete and steel, softened by travertine stone floors and raw brass. Photo / Supplied
The interior travertine floors seamlessly flow to the outdoor living spaces. Photo / Supplied
Guthrie has designed some of New Zealand’s most exclusive homes – many of which can never appear in the media – including properties on the gated Tara Iti golf course enclave north of Auckland, home to international and local millionaires.
The house includes five bathrooms, huge living spaces, a wine cellar, a gym and an office, as well as the chef’s kitchen and features seamless flow to outdoor 'rooms’ and infinity pool.
OneRoof figures show that homes on the coveted seaward side of Burwood Crescent rarely change hands. The most recent sale was for a more modest 1990s house for $12.8m nearly five years ago. On the other side of the street, not on the water, two more modest houses sold at the end of last year, one for $6.7m ($1.1m above its CV) and the other, with a CV of $6.4m, for an undisclosed sum. The highest sale price on the street was for house near Wall's listing of 13 Burwood Crescent. The house, designed by architects Sumich Chaplin, sold for $18.5m in November 2016.
Wall’s firm has set the most recent sales price record in Remuera, a mansion on Remuera Road that fetched $29m at the end of 2021.
That broke the agency’s earlier Remuera record, set in 2018, when another Arts and Crafts home, also on Remuera Road, sold for $25.5m. That sale was part of a deal that saw the vendors, celebrity property developers Paula and Simon Herbert, go on to pay $27.5m for a modern waterfront mansion on Cremorne Street, Herne Bay, three months later – the highest residential sale price of the year.
