Real estate patriarch’s home has declared reserve of $1.45m - more than $1m below CV

Two weeks before his house goes to auction, real estate patriarch Garth Barfoot is showing his hand.

The four-bedroom waterfront home and adjoining section at 130 and 134 Island Bay Road, in Beach Haven, Auckland, will be sold with a declared reserve of $1.45 million – more than $1m below the CV.

Barfoot, whose father Val founded Barfoot & Thompson more than 100 years ago, told OneRoof last month that this was the first time he was selling his own home.

“We’re a one-house family. My father only sold one house too. In the old days, people only had one house,” he said.

Barfoot & Thompson agent Darcy Goodgame, who is marketing the property, told OneRoof Garth had wanted to show buyers he was a "genuine seller".

Goodgame said they wanted to show buyers what it would take to buy the property at auction.

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“Potential buyers might look at the combined CV [of $2.64m] and go, ‘Well it’s two sections, and it’s out of our price range’. The challenge is you don’t see too many adjoining properties being sold at the same time in Beach Haven.”

The agent said a house on nearby Paragon Avenue had recently sold for $1.7m “and Island Bay Road is regarded as one of the top addresses in Beach Haven, and is probably a slightly better location”.

“The reserve of $1.45m really does show Garth is keen to sell.”

Goodgame said the listing had attracted international interest since it first went live at the end of last month. Buyers from Amsterdam were flying in three days before the auction date and had called to make sure they could inspect the property. The agent said he had received enquiries from Australia, as well as North Shore locals, with about 20 to 30 groups already seeing the house – good numbers for an unrenovated property.

“People are looking at it as a renovation. The house has got great bones, and it’s a fairly straightforward renovation.”

Garth Barfoot is as famous for his love of running as his family's real estate company. Last year he set the record as the oldest competitor in the New York Marathon. Photo / Jason Oxenham

The architect created an open-plan living space with a striking pitched roof of rimu that the builder called ‘the church’. Photo / Supplied

Garth and his wife Judy bought the property in the early 1970s for around $12,000. Back then it was an empty 1606sqm section, one of several up for grabs in a new subdivision. The land had been carved off a former strawberry farm. The couple also picked up the adjoining 1295sqm section at the same, and that too is on the block on June 26.

“We were on the coast. It was a new area coming up as coastal Beach Haven, as opposed to central Beach Haven. In the time the children were going there, the college changed its name from Birkdale College to Birkenhead,” Garth told OneRoof last month.

The couple commissioned architect friend Ron Paterson to design their new family home. Their only stipulation was that they wanted four bedrooms, not three, which was the norm at the time.

The deceptively simple design resulted in two identical square blocks – a single-level open-plan living room, dining and kitchen joined to a two-storey bedroom and garage wing by a flat-roofed entry hall.

Paterson designed the roof eaves with extra overhang for shade on the north and west, and less on the south to allow more sun, an unusual move for the time, Garth said.

The property holds great memories for Henry, who described a classic kid’s haven of beach and bush, and swarms of kids running in and out of each other’s houses (several are still friends to this day, he added).

“It was a great place to grow up. We’d get home from school and go straight down to the beach in the summer, we used to catch snapper off the old wharf with bamboo poles,” he told OneRoof.

“We’d have great games of hockey on the back lawn, with little boards on the edge to stop the balls rolling down the cliff. My dad built a massive flying fox that was the whole length of the lawn.

“We’d all be playing at someone’s house and one of the mums had a whistle you could hear from our house. She’d blow it when it was time for her kids to go home.”

Garth said he was keen to let the house go, explaining that he and Judy had moved into the nearby retirement home 18 months ago. “I’m a lot keener to sell than I was. I’m quite prepared to say goodbye. And I’m quite happy to sell by auction,” he said.