An abandoned stately home on Oriental Parade that’s been the target of multiple complaints over the years due to its neglected and crumbling state has hit the market.
The large 1900s-character home in one of Wellington’s blue-chip suburbs with an RV of $4.1m is the most expensive of seven rundown properties being sold off by a liquidator.
The properties, which have a combined value of more than $10m, are scattered around Wellington and the Hutt and are being sold in an “as is, where is” condition.
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The houses were purchased by Wellington-based property firm Shazwal Investments, whose sole director is Sharon Scaife, over the last 30 years with the intention of renovating them.
But the company was put into liquidation in September last year and the properties are now being sold off to realise the assets. The IRD, ACC and Westpac are among the creditors named in the liquidator's first report.
Work to do up the large character home at 304 Oriental Parade was started and never completed. Photo / Supplied
Tommy’s salesperson Jason Lange, who along with some of his colleagues has been appointed by liquidator Heath Gair of Palliser Insolvency Limited to sell the houses, said the properties were in various states of disrepair. Work had started on them but never been finished.
Some of the properties were previously tenanted but no longer met the healthy home standards and most weren’t liveable in their current conditions.
“My understanding is that they were going to renovate all of them over a time period. I’m not sure of the details around why that hasn’t happened, but as you can see it definitely requires someone to come in, likely a builder or developer potentially, someone with experience in the construction industry to come in and revitalise them.”
The most expensive property on the block is a large character home at 304 Oriental Parade, in Oriental Bay, which has an RV of $4.12m largely due to its $4.1m land value, and overlooks the water. It was bought by Shazwal Investments for $1.28m in July 2004.
The five-bedroom, two-bathroom home is surrounded by some of the city’s most affluent homes and is just doors away from a three-storey Georgian-style home that sold for $4.195m in February last year.
Its crumbling state has riled neighbours and it has been the subject of ongoing complaints to the Wellington City Council since 2015. The neighbour alleged roof tiles had fallen onto the shared cable car and raised concerns about the missing guttering causing possible landslips, according to a Stuff report last year.
The property at 1/302 Oriental Parade has been re-clad and re-roofed. Photo / Supplied
While a neighbouring five-bedroom, two-bathroom property at 1/302 Oriental Parade, in Oriental Bay, which has an RV of $1.83m, is also for sale in an equally poor state. The house has been re-clad and re-roofed, but is almost an empty shell inside with some of the plasterboard on the walls and ceiling missing.
Lange said the Oriental Parade properties were in stunning locations and needed someone with “incredible vision and some pretty serious capital behind them” to restore them.
“They are all very different price points. Obviously, the ones in Oriental Bay are going to be more expensive.”
None of the properties were beyond being saved, he said, and would most likely suit builders or flippers.
“I don’t think any of them are pull-downs – they are not in that sort of state of disrepair.”
The three-bedroom, one-bathroom home on Frederick Street, in Avalon, that has missing external and internal walls is being marketed as a project. Photo / Supplied
A three-bedroom, one-bathroom house at 42 Frederick Street, in Avalon, with boarded-up external walls and missing internal walls is being marketed as a project and, according to Lange, had the potential to be restored into a lovely family home.
A home and income property at 70 Mitchell Street, which has an RV of $1.41m, and a neighbouring three-bedroom, two-bathroom house at 72 Mitchell Street, in Brooklyn, which has an RV of $1.43m, also had renovation potential. The listing photos show black grime in the kitchen, peeling wallpaper and stained carpet.
Neighbouring do-ups at 70 and 72 Mitchell Street, in Brooklyn, also require serious renovation. Photo / Supplied
The wallpaper is peeling off and black grime covers the kitchen cupboards at 72 Mitchell Street. Photo / Supplied
Lange has already received a lot of interest in the home and income property along with enquiries from developers drawn to the combined land size of 1436sqm.
A unit at 9/781 Fergusson Drive, in Eldersea, is being marketed as a “blank canvas” that would suit first-home buyers or investors. It last changed hands for $32,000 and now has an RV of $530,000.
Aanother two-bedroom unit at 61 Farmer Crescent, in Taita, will be the last to hit the market when its listing goes live next week. It has an RV of $455,000.
A two-bedroom unit on Fergusson Drive, in Eldersea, is being marketed at first-home buyers or investors ready to stamp their mark on it. Photo / Supplied
While it was unusual to have so many ‘as is, where is’ properties hit the Wellington market at the same time, Lange said it came as builders and renovators were back looking for new projects they could add value to and flip.
Last month a Wellington property investor made a “phenomenal” on-paper profit after she picked up a bungalow in Miramar for $620,000 and sold it for $1.408 million four months later.
“We are starting to see some of those people come back into the market now which we haven’t seen for the last 18 to 24 months.”
The tenders for the properties close at various times next month.
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