Will a New Zealand home ever sell for $200 million?
When OneRoof put the question to some of the country’s top agents following the recent listing of a Sydney Harbour mansion with a price guide of A$200m (NZ$220m), the answers they gave revealed a lot about the state of the top end of the market in New Zealand.
Right now there is just one residential home on the market in Auckland with an asking price of above $30m, although there have been others, including luxury penthouse apartments, in that price point in the past.
In fact with a budget of NZ$220m, you could buy the 10 most expensive houses available for sale on OneRoof right now and still have $10m left over in change.
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Graham Wall, who has brokered some of New Zealand’s biggest house sales, including the $38.5m for the former Hotchin mansion in 2013, doesn’t think New Zealand’s prestige market will see a $200m sale anytime soon.
However, he knows of homes dotted around the country which are costing their owners around $100m to build, and OneRoof understands there is a clutch of homes that are quietly on the market with price expectations of more than $50m.
According to OneRoof analysis of council rating valuations, the former Hotchin mansion has the country’s highest RV, at $58m. The property, which is owned by Chinese-born businessman Stone Shi, isn’t for sale, said Wall, so there’s no point in speculating what it could fetch.
Wall said privacy was a big factor in New Zealand’s prestige market. “The difference between Australia and New Zealand is that buyers and sellers at the very top end here prefer to stay under the radar,” he said.
“Even at the very top, Kiwis are low-key people.”
Agent Graham Wall with his sons Ollie and Andrew on the grounds of Auckland's most expensive home, the former Hotchin mansion, which Wall sold for $38.5m in 2013. Photo / Fiona Goodall
Auckland's Herne Bay, which is home to several expensive waterfront homes. Photo / Chris Tarpey
So what does A$200m get you in Sydney, where the wealth is very much on show?
The listing that has everyone talking in Australia is the four-storey harbourside mansion being sold by Aussie Home Loans founder John Symond. The house, which cascades down a cliff in the exclusive Sydney suburb of Point Piper, took eight years to build and is legendary in real estate circles.
While it is nominally just a four-bedroom, it does have the space that can comfortably host parties of up to 500 people, and boasts a 22-seat theatre, two commercial kitchens, undercover parking for 20 cars, and a 2500-bottle wine cellar.
The real drawcard of Wingadal is that it sits on a 2676sqm site and has 98m of harbour frontage. According to reports, Symond turned down A$110m for the house seven years ago, but this time around he is serious about selling, having announced to Australian media he wants to go travelling following the end of his marriage.
Naturally, the views of the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge are out of this world, and the agent selling the property, Ken Jacobs, of Forbes Global Properties, calls the home and its setting iconic.
On the look out for A$200m for travel money, Aussie Home Loans founder John Symond in 2023 with his now ex-wife. Photo / Getty Images
Symond's Point Piper home, Wingadal, in 2005. It took eight years to build. Photo / Getty Images
A sale for A$200m would shatter Australia’s current house price sale record of A$130m, set in December 2022 for Uig House, a Scottish-style stone mansion, also on Piper Point.
In New Zealand, no house has ever sold above $50m, with the current record, according to OneRoof reporting last year, sitting in the mid-$40ms for a trophy home in Queenstown.
Barfoot & Thompson agent Paul Neshausen, who sells prestige homes in Auckland's Bay suburbs, told OneRoof New Zealand cities lacked the global kudos Sydney has in the eyes of wealthy international buyers.
Neshausen has recently returned from the international Luxury RE convention in Las Vegas, where top global agents pitch their best properties to each other.
“Those [$100m-plus] houses are more a landmark than a house, they have a legacy of ownership, the owners have a legacy, they are well connected, known in philanthropic and charity circles, distinguished in the community, even legendary. We just don’t have that in New Zealand,” he said.
“Sydney is a true global city, their harbour and the Opera House and Harbour Bridge are global icons. In Auckland we’re pitching first the natural water connection, New Zealand’s clean and green image, but there are not many properties that have that waterfront.”
On the market for $32m in Auckland is this mansion at 532 Remuera Road, in Remuera. Photo / Supplied
And, he noted, there were only a few land-holdings in Auckland that were big enough to hold the Australian-style mega-sized houses that were able to command big prices.
Bayleys head of insights, data and consulting Chris Farhi agreed.
“We just don’t have that many big properties, even in Remuera or Herne Bay. You’re more likely to see more extremely high-value properties on lifestyle land, rather than in the city.”
Sydney, Farhi added, was a global city, competing with prices in London or New York, and was being targeted by buyers who wanted to be in that global city circuit. “And foreign ownership makes up a lot more of those global cities’ sales,” he said.
Terry King, of Remuera Real Estate Register, who currently is touting a Remuera Road mansion for $32m, thinks Auckland house prices could get to $100m, “depending on who was looking”.
“It’s based on the income and the assets of the person who is buying. There will be a natural increase [in prices] from the demand from more people with that sort of money coming to New Zealand. There are properties that would potentially reach $100m.”
Bayleys head of insights, data and consulting Chris Farhi says Auckland doesn't have the mega-mansion you see in inner-city Sydney. Photo / Fiona Goodall
He added world “difficulties” always brought more interest for buyers looking at this quiet corner of the Pacific.
Like Wall, King expected the $30m-$40m houses being built around the country will “separate out the market”.
“Until now, New Zealand has not had the expensive homes. Those prices are justified if you’re a billionaire – and people with those resources will want to come to New Zealand.”
It’s hard to see such sale prices if you’re looking just at CVs, said Valocity head of data Wayne Shum.
“CVs for New Zealand residential and lifestyle properties top out at $58m and there are only around 20 homes with CVs of over $30m,” Shum said
“Even in Queenstown-Lakes District, CVs for lifestyle properties come in under $30m, around $29m, but that excludes the big rural stations obviously.”
Shum notes that there will be some higher value single family holdings where owners have combined multiple properties, but as these are under different titles they are not recorded as one estate.
Agents say Queenstown is likely to see a $50m-plus house sale soon. Photo / Getty Images
Queenstown-based New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty managing director Mark Harris knows of properties that would sell for much, much higher than their RVs.
“I don’t think we’re too far from a $50m or a $60m sale. That’s well within the scope of happening,” he said. Some of these properties are “quietly” on the market, Harris said, and if the right buyer came along with the right money, they would sell.
“The buyers would be there, particularly if we loosened up the foreign buyer rules. But even without, there’s definitely enough horsepower for Australians to buy. They’re more interested in the southern lakes than in Auckland.”
Harris said traffic to the company’s listings had really picked up from beyond Australia, with buyers from the USA, UK and Asia, and more recently, United Arab Emirates, checking out properties.
His team recently sold the penthouse and sub-penthouse apartments in the new luxury Lakeview development on the edge of town to an expat for $33m, and said there were more deals in the pipeline with Australian buyers.
The master-planned Queenstown development that recently saw a $33m sale. Photo / Supplied
Coastal properties are where the high-priced buyers were looking, said Ray White agent Ross Hawkins. He is listing a five-bedroom Pahoia estate on 1114sqm outside of Tauranga asking $20m and said that while there were other valuable properties, none would come close to Sydney’s $100m to $200m prices.
But New Zealand being seen as a “bargain” for the ultra-rich is not a bad thing.
“The high net worth offshore buyers spending US dollars or pounds they can get so much more for their money here,” he said, adding that good property was seriously undervalued here. Hawkins said he knows of some coastal Northland properties on private beaches which could fetch $100m or more.
“But those people don’t need to sell, they’ve never tested the market. They’d only be selling when they get to the point where they don’t want the work that comes with these big properties – the maintenance and the staff, it’s a full-time job.”
Like most of the agents OneRoof spoke to, Hawkins said buyers from beyond Singapore and Australia were stymied by our restrictions on overseas buyers.
Ray White chief economist Nerida Conisbee says there isn't the money in New Zealand for a $200m house sale. Photo / Supplied
“Once [the foreign buyer ban] rolls, it will be catch-up time. There are plenty of people in the Northern Hemisphere who want a safe bolthole down here. Then it will be nice to see those special properties realised their true value.”
And how likely is it that the Pipers Point Sydney property will find a buyer?
“We thought A$200m was a long way off, but people are looking at an apartment at Barangaroo [development on Sydney’s waterfront] for A$100m – huge money,” said Ray White chief economist Nerida Conisbee.
“We don’t see those numbers in any other place. It’s harbour front, there’s no more of it. The other thing is that it’s a tax-free asset, so the ultra-wealthy like to park their money in the family home.
“Will it happen in New Zealand? With the equivalent population of just one state here [Queensland], there just isn’t the money,” she said.
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