A real estate shuffle in New Zealand’s most expensive suburb has seen four luxury homes sell collectively for more than $60 million.
The properties all settled during Auckland’s Covid-19 lockdown and include two of this year’s biggest residential property sales.
Agent Ollie Wall, who brokered all four deals with his brother Andrew and father Graham, likened the experience to doing a very expensive jigsaw puzzle.
“This is how we operate. We know X is for sale and these people could go there, then their place is perfect for someone else. We know everyone who is looking, and we have to find someone a place before they’ll move out.
Start your property search
“It was a matter of listening to our clients and putting together the jigsaw puzzle where each party upgraded, or in one case downsized to the others’ houses.”
The four properties, all within a 10-minute walk from each other in Auckland’s waterfront suburb of Herne Bay, had a total price tag of $63.5m, Wall said.
The biggest deal was the $23.5m paid off-market by rich-lister property developer Kurt Gibbons and his wife Makere for a large waterfront home on Marine Parade.
Agent Graham Wall stands next to the Marine Parade property's large outdoor pool. Photo / Supplied
The house, extensively modernised 15 years ago by architects Sumich Chaplin, is a concrete villa spread over multiple floors on a well-hidden 2688sqm section with its own private beach.
The sale price is this year’s biggest, beating the $15.6m paid in June for a five-bedroom mansion on Victoria Avenue in Auckland’s Remuera, and delivers the vendors a tidy return on their $5m purchase in 2002.
This new-build on Jervois Road, in Herne Bay, fetched around $10m and was bought by the vendors of Marine Parade. Photo / Ted Baghurst
The Jervois Road property boasts a stunning finish. Photo / Ted Baghurst
They have used the windfall to purchase a nearby new-build home on a waterfront section on Jervois Road for around $10m.
The Gibbonses are said to be planning a $7m renovation on the Marine Parade home using architects Fearon Hay. The upgrade will reportedly increase the size of the house to 1000sqm and add a tennis court, gym, bar pavilion and more garaging.
The couple have sold their home on nearby Argyle Street for around $20m. That property, another luxury waterfront abode overlooking Herne Bay Beach, was bought by the couple in 2019 for $13.8m and given a top-to-toe makeover before they traded up. It sold just two weeks after hitting the market.
The buyers of the Marine Parade property, Makere and Kurt Gibbons. Photo / Norrie Montgomery
The purchasers were the owners of a five-bedroom stately home on nearby Hamilton Road, which they sold to buyers from outside the neighbourhood for around $10m. That house is now back on the market, with the Walls again handling the sale.
Multi-property deals are not new to the family: Wall Senior made his mark when he started in real estate in 2007 by brokering the sale of 11 Herne Bay properties owned by the Sultan of Brunei for $35m. And he holds the record for New Zealand’s most expensive property sale, $39m in 2013 for the seven-bedroom mansion on Auckland’s exclusive Paritai Drive.
The Gibbonses sold this stunning waterfront home on Argyle Street, Herne Bay, for around $20m. Photo / Supplied
The Argyle Street property overlooks Herne Bay Beach. Photo / Supplied
“Most of the deals we do are in Herne Bay and Remuera. There’s an exodus from Remuera when the kids are super young, then they go back to Remuera for schools. When the kids are grown, they move back to Herne Bay. That’s where the action and restaurants and buzz is,” Ollie Wall told OneRoof.
He said the secret to closing real estate deals was finding the right people. “It’s even better when we manage to put something like this together and make a bunch of families happy at the same time.”
The buyers of Argyle Street, sold this classic two-storey villa on Hamilton Road. Photo / Supplied
Herne Bay has seen a run of high-profile sales this year, including $14m for a five-bedroom 1960s home on Sarsfield Street and around $12m for a Stack Street house, once owned by David Goldie, the father of renowned Kiwi artist Charles Frederick Goldie.
According to OneRoof figures, Herne Bay’s average property value has risen 21% in the last 12 months to $3.677m - the equivalent of an extra $653,000 on the price of a typical house in the suburb.
Remuera has also seen a surge in off-market deals. Agents Terry and Diana King, of Remuera Real Estate Register, recently closed a trio of sales for a total of $30m.
Terry King told OneRoof that another $10m-plus deal was in the works at the moment.
“There are a number of buyers trying to find properties with up to $16m to spend,” he said.
