A novel house built from containers that featured in last year’s Grand Designs is set for auction – but already the owner joked that he is having cold feet.
Tony Hodge's house of cedar and steel wrapped around seven containers, featured in Grand Designs NZ season seven, which was televised in 2022.
The house at 14 Okoka Road, which sits on a 895sqm bush block in Omiha, on Waiheke Island’s south east, is split over two levels, tucked into the bush with sea views.
But Hodge told OneRoof that he’s already in two minds about his decision to sell. “I’ve been living there, and I just love all of it. There’s not one part that I wish I’d done differently,” he said.
Start your property search
“Only yesterday I thought ‘why am I selling it?’ But I’ve been renovating and converting houses since I was 20, so while it was a wonderful idea to build, I’ll let this go.”
Hodge will be hoping for a better result than another Grand Designs home from the same season that was auctioned earlier this month.
The “post-modern castle”, a seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom house on McLeods Road in Sefton, Canterbury, was expected to sell at “significantly below cost” but was passed in at a quiet auction after bids reached just $2.3 million.
The owner, Phil Metaxas, had tried to sell the place last year for $2.875m, but then pulled back on a plan to relaunch it as a boutique hotel.
The enormous house on 4.5 hectares is now back on the market asking $2.69m, saying the vendor has found another and must sell.
Read more:
- Young couple snaps up 30-year-old Remuera home with ‘auction-stopping’ offer of $5.5m
- $60m Waiheke estate comes back to life as Hollywood comes knocking
- For sale: The Grand Designs NZ Piha house that blew the budget
Hodge, himself a builder, reckons he’s done up 20 to 25 houses in his lifetime, five of them since he arrived in New Zealand from London, and is selling because he has another project in his sights.
Plans are still being finalised, but one thing for sure is that his next house, this time in Mangawhai just north of Auckland, won’t be any ordinary box – although it won’t be using containers.
“I won’t build another container house, I’ve done that now. I enjoyed the whole process, but there’s other stuff I want to do now.
“I look at boring standard houses and think ‘it’s just a house’, not much different from the house next door,” Hodge said, adding that eventhough he’s been building in New Zealand for over 22 years he still can’t get used to building costs here and is still reeling from budget talks with his architect for the next house.
The two bedroom house on 14 Okoka Road was built on-site after initial plans to convert the containers and just bolt them together were abandoned. Photo / Supplied
The architect Chris McCarthny joined the containers with a high ceilings and clerestory windows to bring in light to the unusual house. Photo / Supplied
However, building with containers on Waiheke was not about budget or cost-savings, he said, but about his “fetish” for the hard-working boxes. Back in the UK, Hodge had done a few office conversions from containers, so luck was on his side when he found Waiheke architect Chris McCarthny open to the idea of wrapping seven of them to make a house on the bush-clad site.
Initial plans to convert the containers on the mainland and simply ship and bolt them together on the island were abandoned when the challenges of the steep site made that impossible. McCarthny’s idea to insert spaces in between – notably an open plan dining area inserted between the cosier container kitchen and living room – as well as lifting the ceiling with clerestory windows, pushing out a nearly double-height front door, and using concrete floors, cedar siding and decks created an intriguing two-level, two-bedroom, two-bathroom home.
Hodge was careful to leave some of the containers' corrugated steel walls and ceilings to stay true to their origins.
Hodge used local builders for the project, rather than doing it himself, but insisted on English-level specifications for insulation and heat pumps.
“It’s over the top specs, but I’d just say to the builders ‘stick more insulation in’, I don’t care. It’s a lot warmer and quieter.”
Ray White agent Matthew Smith, who is marketing the Okoka Road house with Shelley Dewar, said that the house makes the most of the inspiring sea view and bush surrounds.
He said that the slow winter market, with no sense of urgency for buyers, wasn’t helped by very few listings.
“Usually, we’d have around 150 houses for sale on the island in winter. Now, when you exclude vacant land and development sites, there are less than 50. People are sitting on their hands, but there’ll be a flurry of people in the spring,” Smith said.
A three-bedroom house on a 951sqm site at 13 Le Roy Road, Onetangi, goes to auction August 2. Photo / Supplied
A two-bedroom bach on Ocean Road has an asking price of $899,000 and multiple offers. Photo / Supplied
The upside is that good places that have languished since summer have found buyers, he said. A tidy little two-bedroom 1940s bach with a bonus second dwelling on Ocean Road, Surfdale, asking $899,000 has had multiple offers, and another 1970s two-bedroom place on Hekerua Road, Oneroa, has sold after two unconditional offers around its $1m asking price.
“People are saying ‘now is my chance to get into Waiheke’, there was nothing under $1m before,” Smith said.
Bayleys agent Mana Tahapehi said he now has two strong listings for buyers in the “middle” $3m to $4m-plus range for the island.
One, at 41A Palm Road, Palm Beach, on a cross-lease site one back from the water at Palm Beach, is for sale by negotiation around its CV of $4.3m – a location and price Tahapehi said is great value for the island for the three-bedroom contemporary home with a cute bunk-shed.
A striking three-bedroom cedar house on 951sqm at 13 Le Roy Road, Onetangi, is being auctioned on August 2. The roomy house, modernised by Ignite Architects, is above the popular eastern end of Onetangi Beach and includes expansive decks and multiple living areas.
The agent said that he has had “solid interest” in the house, despite a lot of his buyers still being away on their European holidays. He said they know the beaches and the houses well enough to join the auction from anywhere in the world.
“They probably know it, they’ll have seen it every summer and they know how rare it is to get a place on Le Roy.” He would not comment on the likely price of the property, which has a CV of $3.7m.
New listings are starting to hit the market in time for spring. Tahapehi is about to list a quaint seaside bach on the south side of the island, on Surfdale, that is expected to go for between $2m and $3m.
Chris Jones, New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty’s managing director for Auckland Waiheke said that despite longer selling times – average time to sell a house this year on the island has almost doubled to 114 days, according to Real Estate Institute of New Zealand figures – activity in June has started to show some promise.
“Several commentators are now predicting we are at the top of this cycle of interest rate rises, therefore likely at the bottom, if not already past, the current price corrections,” he said, adding that vendors are only now starting to discuss selling their houses in spring, none too soon.
“We’ve got something like 12 buyers ready to buy in lots of different locations and price points – from $1m up to whatever. It feels like we’re coming out of the doldrums.”
Jones added that the market for locals was just as important as second-home buyers from the mainland on Waiheke now, with the bulk of the activity and enquiry in the $1m to $4m price range. He said REINZ figures did not show any sales over $5m in the quarter ending June, compared to three in the same period last year, and total sales were 17% down in volume and 49% down in value on 2022.
- Click here for more houses for sale on Waiheke Island
