- Randall and Leah Potter are selling their Sandringham bungalow to move to Dunedin.
- They bought a two-storey home in Andersons Bay for just over $1m.
- The move follows Randall’s health scares and aims for a less high-pressure lifestyle.
An Auckland couple is selling their renovated Sandringham bungalow to start a new, more affordable and less high-pressure life in Dunedin.
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Randall and Leah Potter have already purchased their new house – a grand two-storey home in the posh Dunedin suburb of Andersons Bay – for just over $1 million, and are itching to move in.
The move will give the family a new life after a series of major health scares for Randall – one in 2010, the second in 2023 and another earlier this year.
The Potters told OneRoof they had spent around $500,000 renovating their bungalow at 29 Oxton Road, which goes to auction on March 19. And while the property has an RV of just over $2m, they are keen to make a deal.
The Potters’ renovated Auckland bungalow is up for grabs. Photo / Supplied
Ray White agent Jamie Morrison told OneRoof: “They have made it clear that buyers should ignore the CV. They are on the move.”
Randall said the couple were keen to leave the rat race behind. “I worked my ass off in a high-end management consultancy role. I can’t complain because being bloody-minded and focussed gave me the results,” he said.
After his second health scare, Randall was keen to make changes in his life. “I looked at the situation I was in and went, ‘No, I need to decompress and look after myself’.”
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Randall told OneRoof that quitting Auckland’s housing market was a family choice. “This is a classic sea-change. We’re downsizing our debt but it’s an upgrade in terms of the house,” he said, adding that the family was surprised to be competing against six other bidders for their four-bedroom Dunedin house, which has views across the bay and room for an office.
Randall and Leah and their two children – a son aged 14 and a daughter aged 12 – had all pitched in while looking for a new home in Dunedin. They spotted the Anderson Bay home the day they were flying back to Auckland, so had to come back to fully check it out.
Moving to a colder climate is not a chore for the family, Randall said, because they had lived in Leah’s hometown of Vancouver, in Canada, for a couple of years when the kids were younger.
This is the first time in 48 years that the Oxton Road house is on the market. Randall’s parents bought the house from the original owner/builder in 1977. It had been split into two flats and was rented out until Randall and Leah moved in in 2010. They then set about restoring it to its original status.
This is the first time the Sandringham house has hit the open market in 60 years. Photo / Supplied
They found floor boards to match the original matai ones from the 1930s and tore up the concrete parking pad and made it a garden space.
“Go, go, go, doing as much work as possible, you know, like all this it was work, work, work. We went on holiday and that just reignited the thought of, ‘OK, well, what about somewhere different?’
“In my previous jobs I’d done a lot of work in Dunedin so I took Leah down. Then one day we were watching a home renovation show and the conversation started and we went ‘let’s take a proper look’.
“The whole purpose of it is for us to be able to be tighter as a family.”
The kids are excited about the move, so Randall laughed that now all the family needs to do is stock up on their fix of Asian food and ingredients from nearby Dominion Road and dust off their Vancouver coats before heading south.
“We just embraced the fact that this is going to be an emotional purchase, knowing [the move] is so important to us.”
- 29 Oxton Road, Sandringham, Auckland, goes to auction on March 19
