An Auckland couple who turned a failed development into a stylish block of six luxury apartments has been rewarded for their efforts: they have racked up almost $35 million in sales in less than a year.
The penthouse suite in The Bay complex at 65 St Heliers Bay Road, in St Heliers, sold last month for $8.63m, leaving developers Peter and Judy Jones with just one apartment left to sell.
The Joneses, who are well known in the industry for bringing high-spec apartments to market in Auckland’s affluent seaside suburbs, had bought the corner site after the owners’ ambitious plans failed to come to fruition.
Peter Jones had told OneRoof that he “redesigned the whole thing” after he picked up the project. The resulting work has been popular with buyers at the upper end of the market. The lower floor apartments were snapped up quite quickly after launch for around $4m each while floors four and five sold for $8.9m and $9.1m respectively.
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Ray White agent Ross Tierney, who brokered the deals, said buyers were aware that there were few completed apartments available in the city’s eastern bays, and had acted quickly.
He said the $8.63m sale price for the 244sqm sixth-floor apartment was actually higher per square metre than the price of the two apartments below.
“The buyers were moving from Remuera, downsizing wanting the village lifestyle of St Heliers. They’d been looking for a few years, but when they saw these they realised that in terms of high spec, big high-end places, these will be the last for a few years,” he said.
Real estate agent Ross Tierney says that developers Peter and Judy Jones “are so good at what they do, every development simply gets better“. Photo / Supplied
The top quality kitchen included luxury finishes. Photo / Supplied
Tierney is taking the final property in the block, the 323sqm third-floor apartment, to auction on April 10. “There is strong demand for high quality, finished and brand new,” he said.
He said that as far as he was aware, there was now just one other apartment block in the area – The Sonata – with apartments still available.
In that block, a luxury ground floor apartment sold for $8.2m earlier this year by agents Paul Neshausen, of Barfoot & Thompson, and Ross Hawkins, of Ray White Epsom. The top price in the block was $10.5m, set in late 2022.
The curved five-apartment Sonata, which was completed last year by Reside Projects, was designed by Architect Buchan, one of the consortium of architects behind the sculptured design for the proposed Te Tōangaroa stadium precinct, in downtown Auckland.
Last year the top apartment sale was for over $10m for an eighth-floor apartment on Remuera Road. That two-storey 340sqm property came with a remarkable 12-car garage, and was bought off-the-plans in 2014.
The price is well short of the record settled sales price of $16.548m set in 2020 for the penthouse in Elm Remuera, on Orakei Road. In October 2022, another apartment on Remuera Road fetched $12.771m at auction – a record auction price – while a waterfront apartment on Maunganui Road, in Mount Maunganui, sold at the end of 2021 for $10.2m.
Tierney said that Peter and Judy Jones were so good at what they did, that every development simply got better. “This one is incredibly refined, with many thoughtful aspects such as the large storage rooms, EV chargers and solar power.”
- 3/65 St Heliers Bay Road, St Heliers, goes to auction on April 10
