A designer home on one of Auckland’s wealthiest streets has been snapped up for nearly $8 million.
Bayleys agent Sarah Liu, who inked the deal, said Arney Crescent, in Remuera, was only one of a handful of streets her wealthy clients wanted to live on.
“For my overseas buyers, Arney Crescent, Arney Road, Paritai Drive and Victoria Avenue are always popular,” Liu told OneRoof.
“Some of them are new immigrants, and they want a location with water views and close to the top schools.
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“They know the streets because they have friends who live locally.”
But finding the right price for the David Ponting-designed home took some time. The five-bedroom concrete and steel house hit the market in February this year and passed in auction a month later at $7.68m.
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The vendor withdrew the property from the open market in July, but Liu was still working in the background, showing it to new arrivals and new buyers on her database.
“The buyers from the time of the auction, they’d all gone. I was working with a new buyer who wasn’t looking in March,” she said.
A deal was struck at the end of September for just under $8m, with Liu telling OneRoof that her buyer loved the look of the house and its clear view of the harbour.
Liu has just listed a six-bedroom concrete and glass home for sale at neighbouring 124 Arney Road, which she said was looking for buyers with more than $15m to spend.
“To build the house today you’d be looking at $7m-$8m, even $10m, so we’re talking a $15m-$17m house,” she said.
The five-bedroom concrete and steel house on Arney Crescent sold to a buyer who had not been looking back in March when the house went to auction. Photo / Supplied
A recently listed six-bedroom house with a Hollywood Hills vibe on 124 Arney Road could go for as much as $15m. Photo / Supplied
She had already shown the house to 15 groups with budgets of $10m-plus since the listing went live at the start of October.
Liu also has another high-profile Arney Road home on her books. The Claude Megson-designed clifftop house made headlines last year when its backyard was damaged in the floods and slid down the cliff face.
The vendor subsequently spent $1.3m strengthening the land around the house. “It really is safe, there is no problem, and it has the best view in Arney Road,” Liu said after months of remediation work.
Other top homes available in the wealthy enclave include the mansion being sold by entrepreneur Diane Foreman and her broadcaster husband Paul Henry at 33 Arney Crescent.
Henry, in a video to promote the house, said: “You’ll have to be rich. It is fabulously expensive.”
Listing agent James Doole, of Barfoot & Thompson, said there had been a good amount of buyer interest in the property, including from Kiwi expats.
He said both Arney Crescent and Arney Road were a cut above. “There are beautiful street frontages, the gates, the larger homes, the gardens on full sites. It’s very consistent and that gives it integrity. And historically, people have always valued the streets being much closer to the city and Newmarket.”
The 33 Arney Crescent home of entrepreneur Diane Foreman and media personality Paul Henry is in the top 0.3% of homes, according to Henry. Photo / Supplied
The house at 149A Arney Road has undergone major remediation after the January 2023 slips and is now back on the market. Photo / Supplied
Ray White agent Richard Thode, who is bringing a new Brent Hulena-designed house to market next month at 75 Arney Road, agreed that both Arney Crescent and Arney Road were X-factor streets.
“There are some very big Remuera homes, lovely properties on both sides of the road. If you quote it as an address, you know people will always recognise it,” he said. “There’s only a handful of addresses that command that in Remuera.”
Thode said being on the street, even in a relatively modest home, was desirable. “If you’re not in that big a home, your neighbour is. So, you get some upside just by default of having high-quality homes around you. It’s a beautiful-looking street.”
Thode said a brand-new build was rare on the streets that more regularly feature “seriously renovated” grand old homes. The vendors of 75 Arney Road, who are moving overseas for work, spent three years on the project, he said, but he could not give OneRoof a likely price the property might fetch.
There are just three other houses on the market on the streets. UP Real Estate agents Jo Johnstone and Carol Cong are listing an architect-designed six-bedroom three-bathroom house at 34D Arney Crescent with an asking price of $7.35m. It sold a year ago for $7.26m.
And Barfoot & Thompson agents Cici Wang and Coco Wang are selling a recently renovated five-bedroom 1960s home at 82A Arney Road while Michael Boulgaris is selling a 1135sqm section at 155 Arney Road, which he’s billing as an ideal opportunity for a new build.
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