A 40-year-old Japanese-style house in central Auckland has been a magnet for crowds since hitting the market for sale.
Ray White agent Hawkins said there had been more than 550 people at the five open homes held so far for the meticulously-designed house at 65A Portland Road, in Remuera.
“I’ve never seen as huge a crowd ever for a private home. Only when I was selling big new apartment developments have we had anywhere near those numbers,” he said.
“You don’t feel like you’re even in Auckland. After an open home, usually we agents lock up and go, but here we just want to sit down, it’s such a calm place.”
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Hawkins said that lovers of Japanese design, both Asian and Kiwis, have poured into the house, many with a connection to Japan.
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“Many have done business there, or travelled, so they get it,” he said, adding that there are some genuine buyers interested too, not just design lovers.
While the property, on a leafy 1012sqm site, has a CV of $3.75 million, Hawkins said it was hard to put a price on it because it was so unique. The home goes to auction June 1.
The delight that visitors have taken in the house would please its late owner Robin Rive who, with her husband Bryan, conceived and built the house over many years. Robin died in early May, aged 84, and her husband Bryan, who is unwell, is in care. They were reluctant to let the house go.
“But it was just getting to that point,” her daughter Jackie told OneRoof.
The house, designed by architect Robert Railley, took two-and-a-half years to build and was completed in 1987. Photo / Supplied
Mossy boulders craned in from the owners’ South Auckland farm have turned the swimming pool into a Japanese pond. Photo / Supplied
“Mum said selling the house was like cutting off a limb. She was an artist and it must have been just awful, so we’re sort of pleased that she died before the house went.”
Building the house was a lifelong passion for her creative mum, a physio by profession who had side businesses in fashion and then making and exporting teddy bears. Robin later took up pottery in the Japanese style.
Jackie said Robin had a huge personality and her pharmacist dad happily went along with her ideas.
The couple, who also had a farm in Clevedon, travelled frequently to Japan for Robin’s teddy bear business (and “mainly for the food”, Jackie reckons) and hosted Japanese tourists at the farm.
They knew the country and customs so well that for a while they ran Japanese etiquette classes in the new house for businesspeople exploring the newly booming export market there in the 1980s.
Jackie said the house was a lifetime project for her mother, who had owned the section, carved off land owned by the Caughey family of Smith and Caughey’s, for over 20 years. She said her parents built a house in St Heliers in the 1970s as “an experiment” before embarking on building Robin’s dream home.
In an extensive newspaper interview at the time the house was finished in 1987, Robin said it was a love of leafy Japanese gardens that fired her plan. After years of research, the couple enlisted big-name architect Robert Railley to design the house in the style of Sukiya, a simple 16th century farmhouse style made of wood with clay walls.
The kitchen, with modern appliances, still echoes the traditional style of Japanese cupboards. Photo / Supplied
The main bathroom features an onsen-style stone soaking tub. Photo / Supplied
The build, by Symac Builders, took two-and-a-half years and resulted in a four-bedroom house wrapped around a pond-like swimming pool.
“It took a lot of Japanese patience. But because we had so long to think about it, there’s nothing we’d change if we had to start again,” Robin told the reporter at the time.
The only concession to modern tastes were wool carpets in the living room and bedrooms, rather than tatami straw mats, but even the bathrooms have cabinets that echo traditional tansu cupboards and the main bathroom has a stone-wrapped soaking bath typical of Japanese onsen, or outdoor hot springs.
Central heating and smart kitchen appliances were also essential modern touches.
The living room opens through sliding doors to the deck cantilevered over the pool. Photo / Supplied
Stepping stones in the garden. Photo / Supplied
The high ceilings, sliding doors (glass, rather than traditional paper so that the Rives had views of their meticulously-styled gardens) and sheltered porches are all authentic.
Decks hover over the pool, surrounded by rocks craned in from the Rives’ Clevedon farm. Jackie said a standoff with council regulators allowed her parents to keep the pool unfenced as long as there were child-proof locks on all the doors. The mature gardens feature azaleas, Japanese black pines and ferns and boxwood.
But the house was not just for show, and became a warm hub for Jackie, her siblings and the grandchildren.
“We’re a very close family and were there constantly. At different times my brother and sister each lived there.
“Robin was a very clever lady.”
- 65A Portland Road, Remuera, goes to auction on June 1
