- Hollywood chiefs interested in a 37.62ha Matakana Island property with 560m of beachfront.
- The property, priced around $1m, offers riparian rights and potential income from pine trees.
- Buyers can build homes or cabins, with options for forestry, grazing, or tourism development.
Hollywood movie moguls are among those who have expressed interest in buying a block of land for sale on Matakana Island, a long island between Waihi and Mount Maunganui.
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PGG Wrightson agent Andrew Fowler would not drop names but said there was a lot of eyeballs on his listing for the 37.62ha property, which includes 560m of deserted Pacific Ocean beachfront.
“I’ve had all sorts of interest – Kiwis coming home, movie producers, some very famous people. They’ve all been looking to buy a piece of paradise.”
The property has a price indication of around $1 million. Buyers could build their dream house further back from the beach, throw up cabins along the foreshore for themselves or their guests, and earn some money from the pine trees planted on the land.
Buyers also get riparian rights, meaning they would own to the high tide mark, and there was a legal easement from harbour to ocean and south to the barge and jetty.
Matakana Island lies between Waihi and Mount Maunganui. Photo / Getty Images
Fowler described the island as a big stretch of beach protecting the Tauranga Harbour. “It has two entrances, so you’ve got the Bowentown entrance at the north end and the Mount Maunganui main shipping lane at the southern end,” he said.
Although one island, Matakana Island was like two with a sand dune structure on the beachfront and a round part consisting of volcanic clay soil with dairy farms and kiwifruit orchards.
“It’s connected by quite a narrow little piece of land.”
Fowler said the European history of the island went way back, with the pine forest once owned by the Australian Government. Singapore also eyed up ownership for a while. “It’s had a big international history,” he said.
The sandy main road down the middle of the island was named the Hume Highway by the Australians after the highway between Melbourne and Sydney.
The block for sale was currently in forestry with plans underway for the trees to be harvested.
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“There are forestry rights on the land which says the forest has to be harvested and replanted by the end of 2025, so you’re buying a new forest that’s replanted and tidied.”
The new owner would not have to be involved as that side was already sorted, he said, but after that they could decide whether or not they wanted pine forest.
“You could have it as pohutukawa forest, or some native forest, or you could just have it as grazing or something like that.
“If you did have it as grazing there would be some carbon credits to repay because it was in forest before 1990 and any forest that was before 1990 is part of the Emissions Trading Scheme.”
If keeping the pine forest, there was a healthy income to be had, he said.
“The land is given to you with a young forest on it and they grow up and then you will decide to probably sell the rights to that forest, probably to Blakely Pacific who own the rest of the forestry right on the island and then they will pay you each year, or a lump sum, and harvest them in 20 years and then you’ll get the opportunity to do it again.”
In the life of the forest, the income could be around $800,000, which could offset the price of the land.
The property for sale includes riparian rights and an income-generating pine forest. Photo / Supplied
“In 20 years you’ve paid for it, plus you’ve had your section to build your house and have fun.”
Fowler said while people could build their dream house, there were other options. “What I would tend to do, though, is to build maybe some cabins that aren’t consented and have them on the foreshore, so have them looking at the sand and the beach as well as the water.”
He said it was fine to build unconsented cabins: “If you have a flush toilet, that would trigger a consent, or if you have an oven, that would trigger a consent, so without either of those things you don’t need a building consent, as long as it’s not too large.”
“You’d need to have a composting loo and cook on a BBQ or a fire or something like that.”
Building a consented dwelling would mean building further back, “the council says you have to build quite a long way from the edge of the high tide”.
Fowler pointed out the island was close to downtown Mount Maunganui, although required a boat or helicopter to get there. “I think it would be an amazing tourist place. You know, if you had bikes, you can ride all the way along the beachfront and then get picked up at the Mount, right around the island, or four-wheel drive tours – there are lots of options there.
“You’re allowed four paying guests a night without a resource consent so you could have a couple of cabins and a house, three cabins, one each for your tourist couples and one for yourself.”
Buyers would need to do their due diligence to work out what they could do.
For those Hollywood callers, a helipad could be constructed. Fowler said that “from time to time” he picked up the phone and someone from Hollywood was on the other end. “You get the privilege of marketing some unbelievable properties and this is certainly one of them,” he said.
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