- A four-storey clifftop mansion in Castor Bay is for sale with a $23m RV.
- The 1400sqm home, designed by Hulena Architects, features luxury finishes and extensive views.
- Owner James Hoseason built it after buying the land in 2010 for $2.475m.
A four-storey clifftop mansion has hit the market for sale with an RV of $23 million.
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Bayleys listing agent Victoria Bidwell told OneRoof that the 1400sqm trophy home at 41 Beach Road, in Auckland’s Castor Bay, was the most impressive house for sale in her patch, while the owner, former UK commercial property developer James Hoseason, reckoned it would cost $30m to build today.
Bidwell said the house, designed by Hulena Architects more than 10 years ago, was “irreplaceable” and “beyond anything else I have seen”.
However, Hoseason told OneRoof that the property might never have been built. The site had originally been earmarked for a tennis court by the then owners of the house next door, Chrisco millionaires Richard and Ruth Bradley.
The four-storey home was designed by Hulena Architects and built by renowned Auckland builders Good Brothers. Photo / Supplied
The house and the swimming pool boast views of the Hauraki Gulf. Photo / Supplied
Hoseason bought the land in 2010 for $2.475m after emigrating to New Zealand from the UK with his wife, Christina, and their young children.
“I spent two days with an agent driving up and down East Coast Road. We saw a whole bunch of properties. We kept going past this plot, a flat piece of land with a small garage,” he said.
“I said, ‘I want to have a look at that bit of land, but I do not want to buy it’. Then we went off on holiday.”
He changed his mind after he had a look at the feasibility plans by architect Brent Hulena. The initial plan was to buy the land to on-sell with the designs at a later date, but the family loved what they saw. “We fell down the magic hole with Brent and this amazing house he’d drawn,” Hoseason told OneRoof.
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He was not fazed by the engineering requirements for the clifftop site. Geotech and ground works, including a 22-metre palisade wall and a 10-metre sea wall, took over a year. The above-ground building took another 18 months, but Hoseason said the builders, Good Brothers, were outstanding.
The Hoseasons extended Hulena’s original concepts, adding an office wing on the ground floor and a wing housing the principal bedroom wing. Both wrap around a west-facing grassed courtyard.
Hulena’s design puts the living rooms, kitchen, and swimming pool on the main floor, and additional bedrooms plus two library/reading rooms upstairs. Two more floors are cut into the cliff below, one for the six-car garage, laundry, and plant room, the other for a self-contained guest suite, plus cinema and gym.
The house has an RV of $23m, but owner James Hoseason says it would cost much more to replace in today’s market. Photo / Supplied
The house is 1400sqm in size. “You could put 60 people in the room, and you would not even think it was busy,” says Hoseason. Photo / Supplied
The main living room has 260-degree views to the east, from the Waitakere Ranges to Little Barrier Te Hauturu-o-Toi, and, to the west, opens to the sheltered courtyard that gets the evening sun. Luxury finishes such as honed basalt walls and cedar sunscreen louvres, honed and flamed basalt paving, with pale oak flooring inside, balance the rugged stone and showcase the Good Brothers’ workmanship.
“The house is massive, so everything is huge. The bench in the kitchen is five metres long. It is a fantastic house for entertaining. You could put 60 people in the room, and you would not even think it was busy,” Hoseason said.
He jokes that even cars get a great view from the glass-walled garage. And while he and Christina have only two vehicles between them, he said the space for six to seven vehicles had attracted interest from car collectors.
“Because I’m a developer, we were pretty careful about high quality, but not silly,” he said.
“We’re talking about $17,000 per square metre. That’s $24m just for the build. To buy the land is $6m. And that’s before any architect fees. So this is $30 to $32 million all day long.”
He said the couple had decided to sell now that they had downsized to a smaller place near the beach. However, Christina was keen to start another building project. “Once you’ve built on a clifftop, it’s hard not to do that again,” he said.
- 41 Beach Road, in Castor Bay, Auckland, is for sale by negotiation
