After a five-year refurbishment, a luxury four-bedroom home on Auckland’s Paritai Drive has gone on the market this week expecting to sell for $30 million.
Real estate agent Michael Boulgaris, who is marketing 92 Paritai Drive in Orakei, said he has never seen anything as beautiful as the refurbished 900sqm house.
“It’s like a palace,” he said. “The vendors paid $10m for it at the end of 2016 and have spent at least $20m on it, so we’re looking for $30m. This could well be the record-beater for New Zealand this year.”
The property’s current CV of $10m does not take into account the refurbishment.
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Boulgaris told OneRoof that he already had interest from two wealthy buyers demanding to be shown through the marble-clad mansion before it was officially on the market.
The owners, who run businesses around the world and never moved into their recently completed home, have decided to sell it as they want to travel between their business interests, he said.
“After Covid they decided they don’t need to be stuck in one place,” Boulgaris said.
In the five-year project, the couple gutted the house and completely rebuilt its interior, adding a pool house and more garaging to fit six cars and fitting out a gym and a bunker, putting in separate entrances for staff and contractors and a separate catering kitchen that can easily send out food for 200 guests. Next door there is a bedroom for staff.
The sculptured wood staircase by Singapore designers Weijenberg is the centrepiece of the open-plan ground floor. Photo / Supplied
Light fixtures, such as this room-sized one in the double-height dining room, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Photo / Supplied
As well as the visible decorative changes, they underpinned the house with the latest electronics for lighting, security, air-con – even the door handles. The plant room, where the house runs from, is huge. “When I saw all those wires, it was like an engine room. I realised what a big vessel this is. I thought ‘I can’t believe this’,” Boulgaris said.
But it is the Architectural Digest-quality design that has blown Boulgaris, who is no stranger to luxury decorating, away.
“It is international standards. They worked with architects from New York, from Singapore, the stone is from Italy. Some of those light fixtures alone are at least $200,000. There’s an elevator with a gold-satin finish, the wall tiles are like something from Frank Lloyd Wright.
The main floor has an on-view ‘cafe’ kitchen for friends and family, with a serious chefs’ kitchen behind. Photo / Supplied
The chefs’ kitchen has a courtyard view. Photo / Supplied
“But for all the opulence, it is very sophisticated,” the agent said.
The centrepiece of the house is the staircase that climbs the three storeys. It is a curving sculpture of wood by Singapore-based Weijenberg, an interior design studio famed for their sculptural carved pieces for homes and restaurants. Every piece of the sinewy wood surround had to be carved to the right curve, a job that took a long, long time, the agent said. An upper floor art gallery corridor is also a highlight for the agent.
The house has breathtaking views of the city. Photo / Supplied
The agent says the refurbished property will be a landmark on Paritai Drive. Photo / Supplied
Boulgaris said the main kitchen, a stylish concoction of stone and wood that the owners call ‘the café’, is a gathering place for friends and family next to the dining room and informal living. The mess and noise of the actual food preparation is left for the chefs’ kitchen next door, which gets views of the newly landscaped courtyard from its floor-to-ceiling windows.
Boulgaris said the attention to detail extends to the five spa-like bathrooms and wardrobes that are “made for Hollywood actors”. The principal bedroom suite alone is as big as some New Zealand houses with over 60sqm of bedroom, a 21sqm wardrobe and some 25sqm of marble-clad ensuite.
Naturally the property has breathtaking views back to the city and sunsets from the pool and upstairs decks.
The bedrooms have Hollywood glamour. Photo / Supplied
The marble-clad principal ensuite is some 25sqm, part of an over 100sqm master suite. Photo / Supplied
“For two decades, the landmark house on Paritai Drive that you see from Tamaki Drive has been Gilda and James' Kirkpatrick’s ‘wedding cake’. Now this is going to be the landmark,” Boulgaris said, adding that with no more land available to build on Paritai Drive, the area will become even more exclusive in the future.
The home, and its neighbours, was the centre of a high-profile storm 12 years ago when it was owned by property mogul and neighbour Kirkpatrick. The Auckland rich-lister took his tenant, Westpac head George Frazis, then New Zealand's highest-earning executive, to the Tenancy Tribunal alleging the Westpac boss had abandoned the property and sought around $134,000 to cover the remainder of the lease.
But instead of creating the spectacle of two multi-millionaires battling in a tribunal usually reserved for minor disputes, the two men came to a private settlement.
To claim record house price status, the price would have to beat the $38.5m paid by Chinese businessman Stone Shi for the Paritai Drive home of disgraced financier Mark Hotchin in 2013 and the $32.5m paid by the owners of ZURU toys, Mowbray siblings Anna, Nick and Mat in 2016, for the Coatesville mansion formerly rented by Kim Dotcom.
The $29m paid for a Sumich-designed house on Remuera Road in December 2021 is the most recent big sale, while a couple of Auckland sales this year have reached $20m, one in Whitford and one in Remuera.
- 92 Paritai Drive, in Orakei, Auckland, is for sale by way of negotiation
