- An award-winning home on the Pahoia Peninsula sold after nearly three years on the market.
- Agents Ben Hawan and Jason Eves showed the property to wealthy buyers from New Zealand and overseas.
- The Bay of Plenty's high-end market remains slow, with less than 10% of properties over $2 million.
An award-winning trophy home with a $15.5 million price tag has finally changed hands after an almost three-year search for a new owner.
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Oliver Road listing agents Ben Hawan and Jason Eves confirmed they had sold Focal Point, on the Pahoia Peninsula, telling OneRoof the four-bedroom, four-bathroom house designed by architect Noel Jessop had attracted serious interest throughout the campaign.
They declined to reveal the sale price or the identity of the new owners.
However, the agents said they had shown the home to “NBR rich-listers and captains of industry” in New Zealand, as well as buyers from Singapore, Australia, Europe and the United States.
Hawan told OneRoof that they had predicted the property would be on the market for some time and had prepared for that from the outset.
The award-winning house was designed by Noel Jessop and built by D&B Construction. Photo / Supplied
The property was shown to qualified buyers from New Zealand and overseas. Photo / Supplied
He said the vendors weren't interested in a quick sale; they wanted to cast their net far and wide to find the right buyers.
Because privacy was important for the vendors, processes were in place to pre-qualify potential buyers before granting them access to the property files and the home itself, Hawan said.
Everyone who viewed the home, including the eventual buyers, had been captivated by its setting and outlook. “The privacy the property offers was as important to purchasers as it was for the current owners. And buyers from overseas found the walks along the beach with the Pohutakawa down to the water's edge rather iconic.”
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While the sale was an exciting one, Hawan said the Bay of Plenty's housing market had struggled to find consistent forward momentum since hitting the floor three years ago.
“As interest rates dropped and many residential property investors exited or downsized their portfolios, the lower end of the market has been by far the most active segment, with first-home buyer activity taking a bigger than typical share of sales volumes," he said.
“In the [Bay of Plenty], less than 10% of our residential property market sits north of $2m.”
He said deals at the upper end of the market in the region took time to come together.
“A property will remain on the market until that time; an understanding that explains four of our nine sales this year taking place at their anticipated value after 558, 559, 638, and 951 days on market," he said.
A neighbouring five-bedroom trophy home on Pahoia Peninsula was scooped up last year for $17.5m. Photo / Supplied
Oliver Road has another high-end lifestyle property for sale on Nga Parae Road, in Oropi, Western Bay of Plenty. It has a list price of $15.25m. Photo / Supplied
“Our sales data, which is tied to the upper end of the BOP market, has shown a median days on market over the last two years of around 137, with some sales occurring as quickly as 11 days.”
Many of the buyers who considered Focal Point travelled overseas and found their time on site enjoyable, Hawan said.
“A culmination of the property itself, and what it offers and an eagerness or level of excitement to be here in NZ, to be considering a property in a part of the world that remains very desirable.”
A trophy home on the peninsula that hit the market at the same time as Focal Point fetched $17.5m in October last year - setting a new price record for the region. Trueman & Co director Brent Trueman said the purchasers had been looking for a legacy property and had been won over by the five-bedroom estate designed by Warren and Mahoney.
Oliver Road agents have another high-end property for sale in the Oropi hills above Tauranga, for $15.25m. Skyview could be the next high-value Bay of Plenty home to be scooped up by a foreign buyer, the agents said.
Hawan told OneRoof the property was straight out of a James Bond movie and that while rural settings weren't as popular as coastal positions, the merits of Skyview would captivate the right buyer.
- Click here to find more properties for sale in the Bay of Plenty
