- A young couple bought a log cabin to live off-grid and rent holiday cabins.
- The cabin, near beaches and 70 minutes from Masterton, sold for just below $899,000.
- The property includes guest cabins, a railway carriage, and a treehouse overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Young first-home buyers will be moving to the middle of nowhere after they snapped up a log cabin in Wairarapa.
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The Kiwi couple will join the 30 or so residents who live in the small rural community.
The two-bedroom “fairy-tale” home lies hidden amongst the trees on a 36ha section some 70 minutes away from Masterton - although it’s extremely close to some pristine beaches.
Tremains agent Ash Thomas said his buyers planned to live off-grid. “They are going to live in it and have the alternative life,” he told OneRoof.
The couple are huge fans of log cabin-living. Their current home is a log cabin elsewhere in the North Island and they have now bought their very own cabin on Pack Spur Road, in Mataikona.
The cosy cabin was built for an advertising guru 30 years ago. Photo / Supplied
The remote property has a range of different dwellings on the site, including a tree house nestled in the pine trees. Photo / Supplied
“They know the lifestyle and the buildings and they love them, but this is quite different to what they are used to,” Thomas said.
The Mataikona log cabin was built 30 years ago by former Saatchi & Saatchi creative director Bob Hall. He used it as his hideaway for many years before selling it to the current owners, Raewyn Voice and Curla Gray, in 2013.
Thomas said Voice and Gray were happy with the result, which was just below the asking price of $899,000.
The one-of-a-kind property, which took over an hour to view, attracted interest from all over New Zealand, including buyers from Gisborne, Northland, Wellington, Palmerston North and Hawke’s Bay.
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“Those people actually wanted to move in and live in it. None of them saw it as a bach or a holiday home.”
Along with the impressive two-bedroom log cabin, there were also guest cabins near the beach, a railway carriage, a pink house bus called Floyd and a tree house with views of the Pacific Ocean.
Thomas said Castlepoint, just 10 minutes down the road, was popular with holidaymakers and attracted about 60,000 visitors each year.
A two-bedroom bach at 871 Mataikona Road is looking for $399,000-plus. Photo / Supplied
He said properties in the area were time capsules - and also affordable.
“They are true Kiwiana baches from the 1960s, and some of them haven’t even been touched,” he said. “People just love them because you can get a coastal property for $350,000-$400,000.”
Last week, he sold a rustic bach before it even hit the market.
Voice told OneRoof earlier this year that she fell in love with the Park Spur Road log cabin the moment she saw it. “I just walked up the drive and said ‘Oh My God I love it’. That was it, we didn’t even need to go inside - we were going to buy it. It’s just beautiful, it’s just so restful and so rustic,” she said.
She said they were selling to downsize to a smaller lifestyle block.
Property Brokers agent Anneka Billing said Mataikona was popular with buyers from Wellington and Wairarapa. “A lot of people from Wairarapa are now looking in that good price range to buy something at the beach.”
She’s selling a two-bedroom bach at 871 Mataikona Road. It’s on the market for sale for the first time in 65 years for $399,000-plus.
- Click here to find more properties for sale in Mataikona
