A waterfront property on one of New Zealand’s richest streets is on the market for the first time in 40 years.
The tidy original 1940s building sits on a 490sqm site right on the water at 29 Rawene Avenue, in Westmere, Auckland. It is across the road from some of the area’s most famous, and expensive, property, including a waterfront pad that sold for $24 million in 2020.
That double property was bought by former All Black Ali Williams and billionaire ZURU Toys co-owner Anna Mowbray for $24m from Shrek director Andrew Adamson. The celebrity couple have since demolished Adamson’s house and are building a new house complete with proposals for a helicopter pad and helped by famous design names.
The modest house at number 29 may now be surrounded by high-end real estate, but when the owners' mother bought it in 1983, it was a low-key neighbourhood and the find was a pure fluke on their part.
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“She had to live on the water and she lived in the house until she died aged 96, in 2004,” her son told OneRoof. She returned from a life of art and adventuring in America with her second husband, but wanted a place of her own in Auckland.
Water was in her blood.
In her son’s childhood, the owner was the skipper of the city’s first all-woman sailing crew. But back in the 1940s women were not allowed to be members of the Yacht Squadron, so Heather’s team was registered under the name of a male, her son, then aged four, so the women could race in their own team.
In the 1960s she went on to travel around America in a house-bus, painting portraits for a living before settling in California.
The pair of modest houses, one on the water of Coxs Bay, is across the road from one of the city’s most expensive houses, currently being built by its celebrity owners. Photo / Supplied
The house has a boat dock at the bottom of the garden for its original yachting-pioneer owner. Photo / Supplied
Her son found the house by luck: “One day I was walking on the mudflats [of Coxs Bay] and I spied a sign. It was only an advertising board on the sea side, not on the road.
“It had a funny bedroom off another bedroom. My mother could lie in bed and look at the water. In those days you could pick mussels off the bay, she could walk down the bottom of the garden and be in her boat.”
As she got older, she bought the adjoining house at 9 Kotare Avenue in 1998 to accommodate her full-time care-givers. Both the waterfront house – now split into two rental flats of a three-bedroom, two-bathroom upstairs and a one-bedroom apartment downstairs, with a waterfront boathouse/studio – the Kotare Avenue house next door are currently being rented out, but the family has finally made the decision to sell.
OneRoof records show the properties have a combined CV of $8.4m, most of that in land. 29 Rawene Avenue has a CV of $4.25m, while Kotare, on a 641sqm site, is valued at $4.15m. Records show it went for $690,000 in 1998.
The two houses are currently rented out since the owner died in 2004. Photo / Supplied
The second house, on Kotare Avenue, has a CV of $4.15m while the Rawene Avenue house is valued at $4.25m. Photo / Supplied
Ray White’s Semanie Cato, who is marketing the Rawene Avenue property with Lawrence von Sturmer as a deadline sale closing October 18, said that with the opportunity to also buy Kotare Avenue, buyers will be keen to pick up the rare 1131sqm parcel of land on the water.
“We believe the houses will be bowled as it is such a rare opportunity. There have only been seven sales on Rawene since 2017, it’s a place people aspire to and dream of,” she said, adding that since the listing went live overnight Thursday the agents have been fielding calls from keen buyers. The pair would not talk on price expectations, but pointed to the opportunity and potential.
“We know how amazing this opportunity is. The right buyer will understand the value and the community and neighbourhood.
“People have wanted to live on Rawene for years. We’re all so excited, it’s taken years to get to this point to get it on the market.”
Multi-million-dollar sales in the street are expected.
They include the $17.68m paid for tech start-up entrepreneur Sharon Hunter and former Tauranga mayor Tenby Powell’s striking modern waterfront home. The home made headlines when it was rented by Hollywood action star Jason Statham and his partner, model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, while he was filming the shark thriller The Meg in Auckland.
This year, a modern five-bedroom 542sqm house on a 1176sqm waterfront site sold in July for around its CV of $10.4m, while a modernised bungalow on the non-sea side fetched $5.5m in March. A neighbouring Hollywood Spanish house with a pool on 720sqm went for $3.3m, also in March.
At the other end of the street, Bayleys agent Blair Haddow has a 721sqm section at 5 Rawene Avenue. The site, which sold five years ago for $2.7m, and has a current CV of $4.2m – $4m of that in land, is for sale with subdivision and resource consents and a building consent in process for two substantial concrete buildings designed by Chris Tate.
- 29 Rawene Avenue, Westmere, Auckland, has a deadline sale closing October 11
