- A deceased estate in Oratia, featuring a run-down shack and 1.43ha of bush, is for sale.
- The late owner’s brother seeks a buyer with a “strong heart” and “aura” for the property.
- Barfoot & Thompson agent Jackie Ostrowski says the property has attracted significant interest.
One of the last vestiges of West Auckland’s hippie community is looking for a buyer with an “aura” and a strong heart.
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The deceased estate at 787 West Coast Road, in Oratia, is billed as a do-up of “epic proportions”. It comprises a run-down two-bedroom shack and 1.43 hectares of overgrown bush in the Waitakere Heritage Zone.
The late owner’s brother told OneRoof that the property had been vacant for the last five years, but there had been grand plans to turn it into “something special”.
“I really wish we were in a position to hold on to it. But I can’t do that,” he said.
The two-bedroom weatherboard shack has seen better days but is said to be solid. Photo / Supplied
His brother, a welder/ mechanic, bought the property in 2012 for $400,000. “My brother bought it off this lovely, kind, hippie woman who sold it to him because she liked his aura.
“I thought it was very cute. My brother was a kind and generous person, so I guess she was picking up that he was a very gentle soul.”
Back in the 1970s, several families were living at the address. “The old owners had been friends with the next-door neighbour, and there was quite a community living in that area back in the 70s.”
When his brother bought the property, he found multiple, partially-built living quarters scattered around the block, plus a house bus on the driveway. “There is another ruined house down the side of the section way into the bush,” the brother added.
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The late owner had plans to revitalise the property, but according to his brother, “he was always off helping someone else and sorting out their plumbing, when maybe he should have been sorting out his own”.
“I suggested an architecturally designed house would be a great way to improve the section, but that wasn’t really his cup of tea.”
He added: “I’m sure I’ll find the right owner, someone whose aura we like.”
He said the weatherboard home was reportedly moved onto the site just after WWII, although council records pin the decade of construction to the 1980s.
The property offers 1.43ha of bushland in the Waitakere Heritage Zone. Photo / Supplied
“My brother told me that the current house was actually moved onto the section after the Second World War by an old war engineer who laid down kind of some rail tracks and slid it down the hill into place. Certainly the core of the old part of the house is solidly built, but it’s had some fairly tacky additions.”
He added that there were still remnants of the old hippie community in Oratia, including some of the original neighbours to his brother’s property. “Some of the people who were children, I think, in the 70s live next door.”
Barfoot & Thompson agent Jackie Ostrowski told OneRoof that the property had attracted a lot of interest - almost double what the agency would get for other properties in the area. “We have locals who know the area and tradies who would be looking to do something up,” she said.
She said the property was an “affordable” entry-level opportunity in a “sought-after lifestyle suburb”, with an RV of just below $1.2 million.
- 787 West Coast Road, Oratia, Auckland, is for sale, deadline closing April 10
