- A luxury townhouse without a kitchen sold for $2.98 million in Christchurch.
- The developer left out the kitchen to allow buyers to customise it to their taste.
- The new owners will spend an additional $50,000 to $200,000 on the kitchen installation.
A luxury new-build home in Christchurch has sold for an impressive $2.98 million – but it doesn’t have a kitchen.
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The new owners of the townhouse had been mulling over a neighbouring house that was also on the market, but wanted something bigger and better.
Vivacity agent Aaron Pero’s mind immediately jumped to the most expensive property in the Cranmer Terraces development he was selling – a rounded four-storey three-bedroom, three-bathroom townhouse called the Rotunda.
The couple were instantly taken by its design, he said, and weren’t at all that bothered by the fact the kitchen and the joinery in the wardrobes had not been fitted.
“They loved the curved rooms and the scale of it. It’s basically perfect for them.”
The premium four-storey townhouse in Cranmer Terrace was sold as a warm shell leaving the buyers to do the finishing touches. Photo / Supplied
Pero said selling the luxury new build without the kitchen was a cunning move from the developer Huadu who hadn’t wanted to put something in that might put the buyer off.
“It was sold as a way to customise your own castle on Cranmer so to speak,” he said.
“The developer didn’t want to spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars putting a kitchen in there and wardrobe joinery in there that potentially the buyer would hate because it is very unique so we thought the buyer would be very unique as well.
“So we could put in a light French oak kitchen and they get in there and go that’s disgusting, we want it be very broody and dark timbers and things like that.”
The bespoke townhouse had been kitted out with everything except for the kitchen, he said.
“You’ve got tiled bathrooms, you’ve got carpet, you’ve got timber flooring, you’ve got underfloor heating, you’ve got a lift. So you’ve got a lift that takes you from the ground floor up to the fourth storey.”
The property settled this week and the owners would be moving in with some extremely basic cooking facilities. A kitchen sink and two cupboards had been installed as a token gesture so the developer could get code of compliance.
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Pero said they had already designed their new kitchen and it would be installed in the new year.
“So they might be enjoying some of the surrounding restaurants until they get their own kitchen.”
On top of the $2.9m8 paid for the new townhouse, they also had to shell out anywhere between $50,000 and $200,000, which Pero said would be the likely cost for the kitchen. Joinery for all the wardrobes and window treatments were also needed.
The Rotunda was the only townhouse in the development where the developers had decided it sell it as a “warm shell” and he believed it had been a success.
The three bathrooms were all finished to a high standard. Photo / Supplied
“It does give people the opportunity to make something their own without impacting the developers too much either.”
He had taken other buyers through who not only planned to put in the kitchen, but had also wanted to rip out the bathrooms and floors and start again.
“The reason they didn’t just have this completely empty as a proper shell is because the consent was tied in with the other 43 townhouses so if they hadn’t finished it by putting the tiles in, the showers and the tiny little kitchen they put in, they wouldn’t be able to get code of compliance for all the other ones which means they wouldn’t be able to settle them.
“I had some buyers I took through it and they were talking about doing quite big changes to it – like ripping out all the carpets and ripping out all the floors and redoing all the bathrooms.”
Pero said there was still demand for luxury apartments in the CBD mainly from retirees but they usually had very specific requirements including park views, north-facing, at least 150sqm with two car parks on a single level with lift access.
“You are probably talking at least $3m for something like that and it doesn’t actually exist.”
This was because it was hard to find the right site in the city and the high cost of building an apartment block in Christchurch was often cost prohibitive for developers who tended to favour building townhouses as they were more cost effective, he said.
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