The listing for Phil Metaxas's "post-modern castle" promised it would sell “significantly below cost”, but the top bid of $2.3 million at today's auction was clearly too painful to accept.
Bella Castello, a seven-bedroom, seven-bathroom mansion at 30 McLeods Road, in Sefton, Canterbury, was expensive, ambitious and unique. It even made a star appearance on Grand Designs NZ last year.
The on-site auction today was seemingly Metaxas's last throw of the dice after an earlier attempt to sell the property for $2.875m-plus last year flopped and plans to relaunch it as a boutique hotel appeared to flounder.
A month after joking with media that he might turn into "Basil Fawlty", the inept hotel manager from the English TV comedy series Fawlty Towers, Metaxas pulled the property from several accommodation sites and put it on the market for sale, announcing in the listing he had “no plan b and must sell”.
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After it today, it's uncertain if that still holds true.
The live-streamed auction started in a positive mood, with auctioneer Fiona Kiwi telling bidders in the room and on the phone that the property a "one-off opportunity" and that vendor had given instructions to sell "well below replacement costs".
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"There's only one property like this in the world. We don't have another one like it for you today," she told the bidders, adding that the engineer sign-off had been completed and that the property was code compliant.
Bidding kicked off at $2m but stalled shortly after at $2.3m, with Kiwi and Ray White listing agent Phillipa Gill then taking the lead bidders to another room out of shot for negotiations.
Some 10 minutes later, they came back for another crack but no one was biting, and the property passed in. The lack of bidding action was frustrating, with Kiwi at one point calling out to an agent who had a phone bidder on the line: "Surely she didn't call in to do nothing."
As brought the auction to a close, she said: "You are all quiet in here", before calling on those in attendance to congratulate the vendor "for a great presentation".
The endeavour has been a costly one for Metaxas, who paid $692,000 for the site in July 2021. He had taken over the project which had been started by builder Merv Higgs in the early 2000s but came to a halt after the Christchurch earthquakes in 2011.
Phil Metaxas, left, with Grand Designs NZ host Tom Webster outside his post-modernist castle. Metaxas told OneRoof last year that the total renovation would end up costing "in excess of $1 million". Photo / TVNZ
Bella Castello was originally looking for $2.875m-plus when it was first listed at the end of last year. Photo / Supplied
Metaxas told OneRoof that the build project would end up costing "in excess of $1 million" and that replacement costs were around $12m.
However, he may have an out. He told OneRoof last month that he was “hedging his bets” by auctioning off the property and that he still planned to run it as a luxury Airbnb.
The auction campaign was his last shot at selling it, he said, and was aimed at “getting people interested and thinking that it may not be out of their price range”.
“The agents are saying there is no plan B, but in reality there has to be one... They are trying to put the point in saying we are really serious about this, and plan b is not ideal for me – it's not really what I want to do.”
He added: “There’s always a figure in my mind and no one knows what it is except for me and that’s a figure it will sell for and if it goes for less than that then we will go full steam ahead into the boutique Airbnb.
"Ideally I've always wanted to sell, but the reality is if I'm going to be in the boutique industry, I will just give it one more shot with a slightly different angle and see what happens."
There are multiple living areas in the sprawling 1170sqm mansion with unique windows that look out to the property's 4.3 hectares of land. Photo / Supplied
Gill told OneRoof last month that her instructions from Metaxas were that he wanted the property sold and he had signed off on all the marketing for the property.
Bella Castello has five bedrooms, five bathrooms, multiple living areas, an internal courtyard, generous kitchen and formal dining room. There is also a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment. The 1170sqm floor plan runs over four levels from the wine cellar in the basement to the top tower.
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