- Dinah Malyon is selling her Auckland home and is including her stylish furniture and accessories.
- The three-bedroom townhouse in Remuera is listed for over $3m, with shared luxury amenities.
- Malyon, a pioneer in home staging, has sold her business but continues as an interior designer.
The queen of home staging in New Zealand is selling her Auckland home of 10 years, and for the right amount, she will throw in her stylish furniture and accessories.
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Dinah Malyon, who made her name with DMI Home Staging, told OneRoof that she was selling up to spend more time at her lodge on the Tukituki River, near Havelock North, and the family bach in Taupō.
The three-bedroom townhouse at 3 Joseph Banks Terrace, in Remuera's Broadway Park enclave, has an RV of just over $2 million, but listing agent Pene Milne, from New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty, said she was looking for buyers with over $3m to spend.
Milne said the price indication of $3m compared well to recent sales of similar properties. “The $2.05m rateable value is low. [Broadway Park] is tightly held because it is a superb location.”
Dinah Malyon and her daughter Philly at DMI Home Staging’s warehouse in 2019. "I’ve been undercut by people who are buying s*** furniture." Photo / Ted Baghurst
Malyon is selling her house with her furniture and styling. Photo / Supplied
Residents in the enclave share a gym, two swimming pools, and two tennis courts, and have an easy walk to the train station, Westfield, and Newmarket’s boutique shops, restaurants and movie theatres.
Malyon bought the townhouse in 2016 for $1.635m. She told OneRoof she knew what she needed to do to the property to bring it up to her standards. And she managed to do it in just four months.
Malyon and her partner landscaped the courtyard, redesigned the kitchen, expanded a tiny bathroom into a full-sized one, and upped the amount of storage space the house had to offer. Other touches included ECC light fixtures, re-stained oak floors, and Malyon’s signature sisal carpeting in the bedrooms.
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“We have got beautiful sea views as well, from the kitchen as well as the master bedroom. When there’s a container ship in, it almost feels like they are in your back garden,” Malyon told OneRoof.
“I still love the house, walking in and going, ‘This is OK’,” she said, adding that this was the first house she had ever stayed in for more than three years. “Normally, I want to change things all the time, but I didn’t feel that here.”
Malyon has been selling off the last of her personal staging stock, and she is happy to sell the furniture that she’s artfully arranged in her Joseph Banks house.
Malyon installed a completely new kitchen with marble benches and mosaic tile. Photo / Supplied
The townhouse has views of the harbour from several rooms. Photo / Supplied
“People who have come through the house have commented on the beautiful presentation. It reassures me that the business I struggled with for all those years actually did do some good.”
Malyon launched the home staging industry back in the 1990s when she and a business partner were doing up and selling houses. The pair were pulling furniture and accessories from their own homes to sell their renovated properties, flipping some 10 or 15 houses in that period.
“We would not let an agent through until I had furnished it. I just knew. But then I started researching it, and it had become quite big in the US,” she said.
“We were successful with selling the properties, and the agents started asking me if I would do it for other people. I said to a real estate agent, ‘What do you think of this idea I’ve got?’ and she said, ‘It’ll never work’. Three weeks later, she rang me and said, ‘Look, I’ve got this client. Can you start?’.”
Malyon started staging using her own furniture, handily in storage as she was between houses, or borrowing pieces from friends. As word spread, she worked 60 or 70 hours to build up the business, spending up to $100,000 with the likes of Asian antiques dealers to get the distinctive pieces that became her signature.
Within a couple of years, her business had to move from a modest 300sqm warehouse to a huge 1300sqm place for the $6m worth of stock and had grown to a team of five designers and stylists.
“I had to pour money into the business to buy all the furniture. I did not want to do Freedom,” she said.
Malyon is not impressed with some of the furniture being used in homes at the lower end of the industry. “It is such a cutthroat business now. Those others are undercutting everyone – the people with the good furniture that helps sell the properties. I’ve been undercut by people who are buying s*** furniture, and are devaluing a property by doing it wrong.”
She added: “We have had to suffer the ups and downs of the real estate industry. What I used to find was that when it was really tough for the agents, we were still quite busy.
“In fact, in the GFC, we were up 30% because suddenly [agents and vendors] realised they needed to have an edge. It just worked; it was incredible how it took off.
"Now I feel it’s become a bit sterile. The [staging] kind of looks like Kmart – worse and worse.”
Malyon has sold off her business but still works as an interior designer. “People keep ringing me and asking me to come back and do things. It is just the ‘eye’.”
- 3 Joseph Banks Terrace, Remuera, Auckland, is for sale by negotiation
