New Zealand’s first-home buyer champion has put up for sale the two historic churches she spent millions transforming into luxury homes.
Leslie Harris, who is director of the First Home Buyers Club, which helps Kiwis navigate their way to home-ownership, has spent the past six years transforming the former St Augustine’s Anglican churches on Calliope Street, in Auckland’s Devonport, with her husband Wayne Kelly.
It has been a massive undertaking for the couple, who got married in one of the churches early in the renovation.
Harris, who is also a skilled interior designer and had some experience renovating houses, told OneRoof that when the buildings were put up for sale by the church in 2017 she knew she had to have them.
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“I just completely fell in love with the spaces. They are just extraordinary – the high ceilings. To get two churches on one site in New Zealand – I will never ever get that again, so I just went for it.”
The couple paid $1.32 million for the churches and for the first year, Kelly lived in a tent in the older white church. Harris joined him a year later with her children and for much of the time they were still using an outside toilet.
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When they first started the project, they had planned to link the two churches together to create a single residence, but they later made the decision to create two separate houses.
The wooden original chapel built in 1865, now referred to as the white church, was in a near-derelict state and quickly became the priority. “Literally, it was flapping in the wind,” Harris said.
Some of the wood was rotten and it had to be reframed, but due to its heritage status they had to work out a way to do it and keep the cladding intact.
“Any normal person probably would have called it derelict and bowled it because structurally it was beyond repair. But, me being me, I went ‘we are going to save it’ ... because it was such a beautiful building and I could see the potential in it.”
The completely renovated Devonport churches can be bought together or separately. Photo / Supplied
Lesley Harris: “We’ve kind of gone really over and above what most normal people would do because of that kind of passion." Photo / Supplied
The couple finally got all their consents and were ready to start the building work when Covid hit. “So, we pretty much had to do all of it through lockdowns, material shortages, shipping delays. We couldn’t have picked a worse time to do it,” Harris said.
But after a lot of hard work the building has been brought firmly into the 21st century. Some of the key features include the large custom-made leadlight windows, designer kitchen, high-spec tiled bathrooms and polished timber floors.
The 1920s brick building has not been extended like the white church, but has been given a New York loft-style facelift and has two bedrooms, a study, and a large open-plan living space.
“We have renovated it in terms of every single window has been replaced, all the leadlight windows have been added and upgraded. The entrance doors have been replaced, the stage has been removed, the floors have been restored, insulation has been added.”
The white church is currently being run as a lucrative Airbnb and has impressive water views across to Auckland city. Photo / Supplied
The modern bathroom in the white church is a dramatic change from the outside toilet it had when Harris first purchased the buildings. Photo / Supplied
There are consented plans for the brick church to be extended into a similar four-bedroom, two-bathroom home like the white church if the new owners want.
Harris initially lived in the white church with her family and rented out the brick church as an Airbnb, but they have recently switched them and she and her husband are now residing in the brick church which also houses her studio and gallery.
The churches have been popular on Airbnb with overseas guests, especially Americans, eager to stay in a converted church.
The income stream, which is estimated to be about $120,000 a year for one church, also provided vital cash flow for them to complete the renovation.
Harris said they offer the new buyers plenty of options and can be family homes, short-term lets, or one church could be lived in permanently and the other used as an office, café or gallery.
The bedrooms are stylish yet retain the character of the building's past. Photo / Supplied
Harris says the churches are warm inside. Photo / Supplied
But after pouring her heart and soul into restoring her “babies”, Harris is now eyeing a new project. She plans to join forces with her builder to design and build high-end, high-spec rammed earth homes so has put the churches on the market to fund it.
“I think you do get to the point where you have put in five years of blood, sweat and tears, and go, ‘ok time for a change’,” she said.
“I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a house, and I don’t think I ever will again. Every person that has walked through these doors, the responses were either ‘wow’, ‘OMG’. It’s been a lot of fun.”
The houses can be purchased individually with the couple committing to get the subdivision completed before settlement or both on the one title. The properties are being marketed by UP Real Estate and have a set sale date of July 19.
While Harris said it was difficult to put a price on such a unique offering, feedback so far if the churches sold separately was that the white church would be mid to high $2m and the brick building could fetch early to mid-$2m.
The renovation tested Harris' skills as an interior designer. Photo / Supplied
Harris and her husband had planned to join the two churches but settled on keeping them as two separate residences. Photo / Supplied
The couple paid $1.3m for the churches, which Harris said was pretty much for the land alone because replacing the buildings would have been cheaper than restoring them.
She was hesitant to say how much she spent on the project, adding it was “millions”. “By the time we had finished that back wooden building, we had tripled our budget on both of them.”
Harris said there was a misconception that the buildings were cold and would cost a fortune to heat. The white church is like a new-build in terms of warmth with insulation in the floor, walls, and roof, she said, and the double-skin brick provides a natural insulation and also has underfloor insulation.
But despite feeling like she’s been in a constant battle to protect the churches, she is proud of what she has achieved and the efforts she went to to save them to ensure they would be beautiful, strong, resilient buildings that are going to remain a Devonport icon for another 100-plus years.
“We’ve kind of gone really over and above what most normal people would do because of that kind of passion. They’ve been like my children," Harris said.
“I can sit back now and feel quite proud that we’ve done the right thing by the buildings and not just the right thing by us.”
UP Real Estate listing agent Kara Barston said the churches were so unique and were attracting a lot of interest. There’s been a huge number of hits on listing websites, she has been fielding multiple phone calls and emails, and her social media had “gone nuts”.
“They are genuine people too. It’s incredible how many people have decided they would quite like to live in a church.”
- 95A Calliope Road, in Devonport, Auckland, has a set sale date of July 19
