- A developer purchased two villas in Onehunga for over $3m to support school libraries.
- The properties, once owned by Charles Nieukerke and Eunice Stark-Brown, were sold by a charitable trust.
- The new owner may build terrace houses, with hopes the villas will be relocated rather than demolished.
A developer has snapped up two neighbouring turn-of-the-century villas in Auckland’s Onehunga.
Start your property search
Multiple offers were made on the Quadrant Road properties – one a three-bedroom villa and the other a five-bedroom home. OneRoof understands they sold together for north of $3 million, delighting the trust selling them as the proceeds will go to the building of school libraries.
The homes once belonged to the late Charles (Karel Herman Paul) Nieukerke, from Holland, and his wife Eunice Stark-Brown, and were available to buy separately or together.
Listing agent Carl Madsen, from Barfoot & Thompson, said first-home buyers showed interest in the smaller house but they weren’t able to compete with the other offers on the table.
“The eventual buyer bought the two properties combined.”
Madsen said the new owner could clear the 1800sqm corner site and build terrace houses.
The two properties sit on a 1800sqm corner site and offer the new owner a chance for development. Photo / Supplied
He hoped the villas would be removed, rather than demolished. “Removal companies have already put their hands up to say if the houses need to be removed they are happy to take them,” he told OneRoof, noting that while the properties needed a bit of work they were solid and too good to bowl.
“I’ve seen them put on barges and get shipped off. There’s a very good possibility of new beginnings for these beautiful villas.”
Madsen said some of the first-home buyers interested in the smaller villa had been put off by the work needed. “It’s a generational thing. I remember when I started in real estate, the young ones, and even myself when I was young, we’d prefer to buy something that we could add value to,” he said.
Discover more:
- Run-down deceased estate sells for $482,000 after 11-way bidding war
- Who are the house price winners and losers of the last 25 years?
- Auckland bungalow sells for more than $8m in just two weeks
“My wife and I were up at two in the morning painting ceilings and things before work, whereas it’s just a different generation. I knew how to put a door handle on a cupboard, whereas I don’t think they do.”
Also interested in the properties was a church group looking at both houses, while other parties were looking at living in one house and having the other as an investment.
One of the trustees selling the homes, Janet Edmond, was the niece of Charles Nieukerke and earlier told OneRoof her uncle was an eccentric with a brilliant mind.
She used to visit as a child and described towers of books growing around him while he worried at maths problems and studied piles of early computer paper to solve efficiency problems at the then Auckland City Council where he worked.
First-home buyers showed interest in the smaller villa. Photo / Supplied
She said he introduced computerisation to the council, and was understood within the family to have helped Allied forces fly safely over the North Pole during World War II.
“I’m told the Allies had a problem because bombers were getting lost over the North Pole because their compasses were being tampered with by magnetic North and he set up a system of four radar towers in different locations around the North Pole that enabled the Allied bombers to get home safely.”
Before the couple died, both in the 1990s and aged in their eighties, they set up their estate as a charitable trust to help the needy.
Small grants were made over the years until the trust decided to sell to better utilise the return with the proceeds going towards school libraries because of the couple’s love of books and learning.
- Click here to find more properties for sale in Auckland
