A run-down villa for sale in Auckland’s Grafton is one of the few original houses left in the city-side suburb.
The eight-bedroom house on a 678sqm site on 24 Claremont Street, Grafton, is one of just two houses on the market in the central city suburb.
On the market for the first time in nearly 70 years, it is being sold by the five siblings who grew up in the house owned by their parents.
The mother still lived in the house with her daughter until she died three years ago, said Barfoot & Thompson agent Calvin Roche, who is selling the house by tender closing July 12.
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Roche is familiar with selling original-condition villas around the city.
He made headlines over two years when he sold a Grey Lynn house in a similar run-down condition for $2.23m at auction in January 2021 in the midst of the post-Covid market boom. The three-bedroom villa with no parking on Harcourt Street got $500,000 over CV. Snapped up by a developer couple, it sold 18 months later for $3.2m after a complete renovation.
However, Roche was not prepared to put a price estimate on the Grafton villa, which has a CV of $2.7m, just $250,000 of that for the value of the house.
“No one is putting a dollar figure, people are saying different things, but it's definitely got a lot of potential. People are coming through with their builder and architects, and I heard a builder say it still had good bones,” Roche said.
He also sold an historic villa on Luke Street, Otahuhu, that had been built by the owners' grandfather before he joined the war in 1916. That property, with a CV of $1.225m, sold to an investor for $1.04m in March this year.
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“All the other sales in the area are townhouses and new-builds for around $3m. A year back, a home in four flats on Park Avenue sold as an investment property for $3.7m.
“In the week since we’ve listed, we’ve had very good interest – 58 groups through.”
Roche said interest was mainly from families looking for a renovation in the city, including both Grafton locals looking to upsize from nearby villas and Grey Lynn or Ponsonby buyers looking for more room and garaging than they can get on their western side of town.
The villa on Claremont Street, Grafton, on a 678sqm site has a CV of $2.7m. Photo / Supplied
Many of the rooms in the Claremont Street villa are untouched. Photo / Supplied
The original bathroom - although the owner had a smarter 1980s bathroom and kitchen for her daily use. Photo / Supplied
“People are willing to take on a project. There’s an original kitchen, laundry and bathroom, another 1940s extension and kitchen that was done up in the 1980s. We found old newspapers dating to the 1930s.”
One of the owners, who did not want to be named, said his father and uncle bought the house in 1956. His grandfather had run the fruit and vege shop in Grafton before bringing out his sons from India to help. The brothers bought the house in 1956 and their families grew up together.
“The temple and Gandhi centre in Newton, that was my mother's community and this is where she wanted to be until she passed," he said.
The children used to walk across the footbridge over Grafton Gully to go to the primary school on Nugent Street. As the medical school and hospital campuses grew and fewer families lived in Grafton, the school closed in 1971 and the children then went to Newmarket school. The boys went to Auckland Grammar and the girls to Epsom Girls, he said.
While he was not happy with the condition of the house, the co-owner said a local builder who has done several renovations in the area informed them that the bones of the house were still in good condition.
Roche’s vendors may take heart from the sale of a restored 1876 mansion on nearby Huntly Avenue. According to Ray White’s Richard Thode, one of the agents who marketed the sprawling 326sqm concrete mansion and guest house, it eventually sold in 2019 for over $4.8m after the addition of a smart modern kitchen and bathrooms.
A block away, Ray White agent Levani Lum-On is selling a more modest two-bedroom Victorian cottage on 26 Seafield View Road with a set sale closing July 10.
The Claremont Street villa still has fine Victorian features. Photo / Supplied
A two-bedroom cottage with multiple living rooms at 26 Seafield View Road, Grafton, is selling by a set sale date closing July 10. Photo / Supplied
Again, he could not be drawn on the likely price of the tidy house, which has a CV of $1.8m, but noted that a neighbouring three-bedroom cottage with one off-street carpark and no garage went for $1.72m in April, below its $2m CV.
A neighbouring three-bedroom cottage on Seafield View Road sold for $$1.72m in April. Photo / Supplied
Unlike its counterparts in Grey Lynn, the pretty Grafton cottage on 354sqm has an internal garage, a sought-after feature which has been pulling buyers from both the inner-city suburbs as well as those from further afield and overseas.
Lum-On said that while the Seafield View Road house only had two bedrooms, a second living room could be easily converted back to a third bedroom and there was a roomy mezzanine in the modern living room wing, currently used as a bedroom, as well as storage attic.
“We had 26 groups through the first open home, everyone was surprised at the room and how much storage there is.”
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