Bella Castello, the “post-modern castle”, in the heart of Canterbury, is back on the market. Again.
In the space of a year, 30 McLeods Road, in Sefton, has been listed for sale four times. This time around, Harcourts Gold agents Michelle Fu and Archer Xu are picking up the challenge, bringing it to auction on November 2.
The last time the property was on the block, in July, it passed in at $2.3 million.
The owner, Phil Metaxas, had stated it would sell “significantly below cost”, but $2.3m was clearly too painful to accept.
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Bella Castello, a seven-bedroom, seven-bathroom mansion, was expensive, ambitious and unique, and had even made a star appearance on Grand Designs NZ last year.
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November’s auction will be the latest “last throw of the dice” for Metaxas; before July’s failure he twice tried to sell the property for $2.875m-plus. And in April, he even tried to relaunch Bella Castelo as a boutique hotel.
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 then 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”.
After July’s auction failure, the property was priced by negotiation before being withdrawn and changing agencies and sales methods.
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 cost "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
The latest listing on OneRoof aims to capture the bridal market, declaring: “Bring your horses and have a wedding.”
“This property presents endless opportunities – bring your horses, envision a wellness centre, or consider growing grapes. Embrace a family-oriented lifestyle or explore the possibilities of operating a boutique wedding accommodation or an Airbnb venture,” the agents say in their marketing.
“The vendor has found another opportunity and is motivated to sell.”
The same wording was used in the previous listing.
Bella Castello has been a costly endeavour 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.
Metaxas told OneRoof that the build project would end up costing “in excess of $1 million” and that replacement costs were around $12m.
In the lead up to his July auction, he told OneRoof that he was “hedging his bets” by auctioning off the property and that he still planned to run it as a luxury Airbnb.
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
The July auction campaign, he said in June, was his last shot at selling it and was aimed at “getting people interested and thinking that it may not be out of their price range”.
The listing had declared back then: “The vendor has no plan b and must sell.”
Metaxas told OneRoof in June: “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.”
Another Grand Designs home, at 14 Okoka Road, Omiha, on Waiheke Island, goes to auction on November 4. Photo / Supplied
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.
It goes to auction two days before another 2022 star of Grand Designs goes under the hammer.
Tony Hodge’s house of cedar and steel, which sits on a 895sqm bush block in Omiha, on Waiheke Island’s south east, will be auctioned on November 4.
14 Okoka Road, which is split over two levels, is listed with Ray White agents Matthew Smith and Shelley Dewar.
Hodge told OneRoof when his listing went live that he had been 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.
“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.”
- 30 McLeods Road, in Sefton, Canterbury, goes to auction on November 2
