- Paritai Drive in Orakei boasts a combined RV of over $1b, with 28 homes over $10m.
- Paul Sissons has two original houses for sale, between mansions worth $21.84m and $21m.
- The record price on the street is $38.5m, paid by Stone Shi in 2013.
It is the billion‑dollar street that set a New Zealand house price record that stood unbroken for a decade.
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Paritai Drive, in Auckland’s Orakei, is the favoured address of the country’s elite - both the newly minted and those with old money stretching back generations.
The combined RV of the 128 houses on the long winding road that looks out to the harbour is a staggering $1,070,310,000. One of the homes, a mansion owned by Chinese businessman Stone Shi, has an RV of $72.5m - the highest in Auckland. Another 27 have RVs of over $10m.
The former Hotchin mansion on Paritai Drive sold for $38.5m in 2013 and held the record for New Zealand’s most expensive home for 10 years. Photo / Fiona Goodall
There are 128 houses on Paritai Drive, many of them with RVs of over $10m. Photo / Chris Tarpey
For the last 90 years, Paritai Drive was the street where discreet money put down roots. New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty agent Paul Sissons has two of Paritai’s original houses for sale.
They sit between an Italianate mansion that sold for 2024’s record price of $21.84m and a flamboyant Spanish-Hollywood house worth $21m. A few doors down is a large trophy home Sissons sold last year for $18m.
The record price on the street - and until a few years ago, New Zealand as a whole - is $38.5m, paid by Shi in 2013 for the imposing home built by disgraced financier Mark Hotchin. The 4200sqm mansion takes up an entire block, and is often held up as a symbol of real estate wealth in Auckland.
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Sissons’ neighbouring mansions at 80 and 82 Paritai Drive were the first to be built on the newly subdivided paddocks above Tamaki Drive. Number 80 was built in 1932 and is on the market for the first time in nearly 40 years, while its neighbour at no 82, built a couple of years later, last changed hands in 2010, and was previously the home of George Hitchcock, a squadron leader in the Royal New Zealand Air Force during the Second World War and later a renowned doctor.
The two properties have a combined RV of $26.5m and a combined footprint of 1800sqm. Sissons expects buyers will want to buy both and clear the site for a more modern build that takes advantage of the clear views of the water and city (there are no houses opposite on this stretch of the drive).
80 Paritai Drive benefitted from a refresh a decade ago, which included a modern glass and steel pavilion designed by architect Ken Crosson. Photo / Supplied
82 Paritai Drive was originally crafted in the 1930s. Photo / Supplied
However, the properties can be purchased separately. The houses themselves have been meticulously cared for, have swimming pools and are ripe for renovations.
There’s a surprising modern glass and steel pavilion that architect Ken Crosson added to number 80 a decade ago, and at number 82, there’s a separate studio, and surprising period details, including call buttons for the servants who would have originally worked at the home.
Sissons said he already had buyers lining up, some who have told him they were “prepared to spend what it takes” to get the right property.
- 80 Paritai Drive and 82 Paritai Drive, Orakei, Auckland, are for sale, tenders closing May 28
