The outgoing CEO of Chorus has sold his waterfront Auckland home for $3.25 million at auction.
JB Rousselot and his wife Susan spent nearly two hours on Sunday negotiating with the only bidders to attend their auction, a Kiwi couple living in Sydney.
The pair had put their five-bedroom renovated house on Queen Street, in Northcote Point, on the market last month after deciding to move to Australia to be closer to family.
Harcourts agent Julie Shand said that the buyers, who flew in from Sydney to join the auction, were moving to Auckland to be close to their family and grandchildren.
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“They’re very excited. They had just sold their house over there. They see our waterfront as way better value, telling me that you’d pay a lot more for that view in Sydney,” Shand told OneRoof.
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She added: “People see this as better value than in Mount Albert, Grey Lynn, Herne Bay or Ponsonby. They can’t believe the value here: the views, the fact you can walk down to your own bit of beach, and that it’s only five minutes over the bridge to the city.”
Shand said the fact her clients had been prepared to meet the market had made a difference. “I’ve got some disappointed people [who missed out]. It’s rare to have a place that’s an iconic 1890s house, completely restored, with those views. I will be door-knocking for places for them now.”
The Rousselots had bought the Queen Street property for $2.5m in 2019, after French-born JB joined Chorus as chief executive.
The couple had been looking for something that reminded them of their time in Sydney, where JB was a senior exec at Telstra and NBN.
JB Rousselot is heading back to Sydney. He stood down as Chorus CEO in April. Photo / Michael Craig
The Rousselots spent hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading the home. Photo / Supplied
Susan told OneRoof ahead of the auction: “We wanted three things; to be waterfront, to live within 10 minutes’ drive from the city, and to buy somewhere we considered good value for money.”
The Rousselots reconfigured the house from two dwellings to a three-level 212sqm family home. “Lots of rather scrubby trees had grown up to block the view, so we had those removed,” Susan told OneRoof.
She replaced a tiny clifftop viewing deck with a significant one that revels in the view. The renovation was completed in three stages, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The project included returning the home to one dwelling, extending its mid-floor footprint to create open-plan living with a gorgeous new kitchen and a bathroom. Ripping up carpets revealed beautiful kauri floorboards.
JB stepped down from his role at Chorus in April.
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