A luxury five-bedroom home in the centre of Wellington has broken the record for the city's most expensive residential property.
The house on Hobson Street, in Thorndon, sold for $6 million in February, but the sale price has stayed private until now.
The house hit the market in October last year with an asking price of more than $7.95 million, a record for Wellington.
Tommy’s Real Estate agent Phil Mears, who was the listing agent, told OneRoof back in October that unlike in Auckland, these types of homes rarely come to market in Wellington.
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“For a Wellington market, it’s a pretty high-value home. There are plenty of houses that are way more expensive but they aren’t for sale as they don’t often come up on the market,” he said.
Mears also sold the Wellington's second most expensive house - a six-bedroom property on Clive Road, which sold for $5.75 million in March last year.
The vendor of 48 Hobson Street had carried out a major renovation of the property. The two-storey house boasts top of the line fixtures and fittings, a grand formal dining room, a powder room and a tasting room, as well as a tennis court.
The house has a grand entrance and quality fixtures and fittings throughout. Photo / Supplied
Adding to its value was the fact it sits on a flat 2365sqm section and comes with an adjoining 454sqm property, at 165 Thorndon Quay, which is zoned commercial and provides tenanted car parking and spaces for two commercial tenants.
“It’s pretty rare to have a large flat piece of land in the middle of the city. Wellington is geographically challenged with hills and there’s not a lot of flat land,” Mears said last year.
New Zealnd’s most expensive property is a seven-bedroom home in Orakei, Auckland. Photo / New Zealand Herald
While a $6m sale is a record for Wellington, it falls well short of Auckland’s most expensive residential sale, the $38.5m paid for a seven-bedroom mansion in Auckland, and the $42.8m asking price of the super-penthouse in Auckland's 57-storey Pacifica apartment tower.
Nicki Cruickshank, principal of Tommy’s Real Estate, told OneRoof today that big sales were rare in Wellington.
“While this year nearly 10% of our sales are over $2m, it’s only every two or three months that we’d get a sale over $3m. There’s a big jump to that level," she said.
“That said, a $2m house today would have sold for $1.4m to $1.5m not too long ago. There just isn’t a lot of stock at the top end."
Cruickshank said that the multi-national corporations that used to own such properties for their top executives have moved north, while embassies and consulates now tend to avoid old homes in favour of new, secure builds.
“There are buyers - well-performing local business-people who are drawn to big and new. We’ve had huge interest in some luxury four-bedroom townhouses in Lyall Bay that are asking over $1.945m, but with the cost of building, no builder would risk taking on a $4m house as a spec build.”
James Wilson, director of valuation at OneRoof's data partner, Valocity, said that unlike Auckland and Queenstown, Wellington was not an international market.
An eight-bedroom mansion in Kaitoke in Upper Hutt sold in April for $2.9m. Photo / Supplied
The high end buyers in the capital were mostly locals, he said, adding that while the city's booming film industry may have benefited the top end of the market, the city wasn't seeing anywhere near the level of big sales seen in Auckland or Queenstown.
“Expensive property moves quickly in Auckland, whereas in Wellington that [price point] is a unique bespoke market.
“We know with our valuations that when a property comes in, it’s quite complex to get enough comparable sales at that level,” he said.
Outside of central Wellington, the situation was the same. In Lower Hutt’s Military Road a house sold in December for $4.6m and in pockets of Upper Hutt prices can pass $2m.
New Zealand Sotheby’s International agent Ben Hawan sold an eight-bedroom mansion in Kaitoke in Upper Hutt in April for $2.9m - a record for the area.
“There are spots around Mount Marua and Emerald Hill with big mansions that nobody knows are there,” he told OneRoof.
