- Marshall Cottage in Lake Hayes, Queenstown, sold for around $5.9m, more than five times its 2012 price.
- The historic 1866 stone building includes a resource consent for further development on the site.
- Luxury Real Estate reports strong demand from Aucklanders and Australians for Queenstown properties.
A Kiwi living in the UK has bought one of Queenstown’s oldest stone buildings for around $5.9 million sight unseen, OneRoof can reveal.
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The buyer snapped up the heritage-protected Marshall Cottage, perched at the end of Lake Hayes, last month after enlisting a buyer’s agent to help him find his forever home.
The three-bedroom property, which sits on a 1.37ha section, was listed with Luxury Real Estate agent Terry Spice, and dates back to the 1860s.
Buying Queenstown managing director Jo Eddington said her buyer had very specific requirements. “He wanted something quite historic. He didn’t want a big shiny new house. He was quite specific in his brief,” she told OneRoof.
The home’s original features included the schist fireplace and walls that date back to when it was built as a farm cottage in the 1860s. Photo / Supplied
Eddington said when her buyer first started looking, Marshall Cottage was not an option. Another buyer had it under contract but then that deal fell over.
“It was a bit of a fluke with timing and it was exactly what my buyer wanted and I guess what was quite cool about it was it was the only house I showed him. I nailed it in one house.”
While the new owner has not physically visited the house, and won’t until later this month, he has made several video tours of it with Eddington.
Eddington even hopped on her paddle board and called him while she paddled across the lake to show him what it looked like from the water. “I showed him people walking and cycling around Lake Hayes and there were rowers on the lake. He’s not familiar with Lake Hayes so the whole area is kind of new.”
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She also arranged a video call with the neighbours, while the buyer engaged a team of advisers, ranging from architects to landscapers, to inspect the cottage.
The buyer, who is likely to split his time between the UK and Queenstown, plans to carry out some careful renovations to the cottage and build a second dwelling, taking advantage of an existing resource consent.
“He’s just beside himself with excitement. So it’s quite cool, but as I said he’s never actually seen the property in the flesh so that will be an exciting trip to the airport when I pick him up,” Eddington said.
Spice told OneRoof it had taken almost a year to find the right buyer for his vendors and he had spent a lot of time with interested parties detailing how the property could work for them.
A resource consent for a large second dwelling next to Marshall Cottage helped attract buyers. Photo / Supplied
“Being sensitive land, it had to be purchased by a New Zealander, which naturally restricted the buyer pool, and the protected nature of the onsite cottage was something that people obviously had to understand as it sets boundaries around what can be done,” Spice said.
The exact sale price has not been disclosed, but Spice confirmed it was very close to the asking price of $5.9m.
Other interest had come from locals, expats and a US buyer who was a distant descendant of the original owner, William Marshall, he said.
The owner told OneRoof last year that she had picked it up for an “absolute bargain” after the GFC (OneRoof records show it changed hands for $1.1m in 2012).
Marshall Cottage is one of four “strong” deals Luxury Real Estate has been involved in in the past few months, with Spice noting strong interest from Aucklanders and Australians.
“We find that a lot of our Auckland or North Island clients start with holiday homes in the area and then find they want to shift here permanently.”
Spice said wealthy Australians favoured “residential transactions in New Zealand because there’s no stamp duty and low bright-line/capital gain thresholds”.
- Click here to find more properties for sale in Queenstown-Lakes
