- The owners of 97 Sharp Road transformed 19ha of farmland into an off-grid luxury retreat over eight years.
- They lived in a tent for three years while building the property, which features a rammed-earth house, permaculture gardens, and a heated pool.
- The property, with an RV of $7.325 million, is being marketed internationally but targeted at Kiwi expats.
It took the owners of 97 Sharp Road eight winters - three of them in a tent - to turn 19ha of farmland in Matakana into an off-grid, luxury retreat.
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As they readied the multi-million-dollar property for sale, they charted the ups and downs of realising their Grand Designs-style project.
It started with two very different sheds: a 270sqm helicopter hangar and carport for him, and a nearly 1900sqm covered indoor equestrian arena for her.
Building the main event, their three-bedroom house designed by architect Richard Priest, took three years, as the builders negotiated Covid lockdowns and shortages.
The couple lived in a safari tent during the first three years of the project. Tenting, one of the vendors told OneRoof, seemed like a good idea at first.
The off-grid retreat sits on over 19ha of waterfront land. Photo / Supplied
The house was designed by architect Richard Priest and took eight years to fully come to fruition. Photo / Supplied
“We didn’t have any power in the tent. All the power was over at the arena and the hangar, with the fridges and the freezer,” she said.
“I had a pushbike and would fill up my basket with stuff we needed for dinner and ride back.”
That began to pall as winter set in, so the couple fitted their temporary home with lights and a kitchen. Luckily, a hot-water shower and a composting toilet were there from the start, but the novelty of the great outdoors wore off.
“After three years, I’d had enough," the vendor told OneRoof. "I don’t want to go camping for quite a while."
When they bought the land in 2018 for just over $3.1m, the couple's sole focus was finding the right sort of land for a permaculture farm. The Sharp Road property, which they've dubbed Obsidian House and Estate, was the fourth property they viewed.
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“I was looking at the property from a permaculture point of view,” one of the vendors said. “A lot of people associate it with hippies, but it's actually a very intelligent design system of working smarter.”
Their single-level house with soaring roofline is another love letter to smarter working and sustainability. It's made from rammed earth – a first for architect Priest. The crew called on experts from Titirangi, who lived on site for three months while they built the walls. Local clay was too orange for their tastes, so the owners brought in earth from near Whangarei. Timber for the interiors was milled from swamp kahikatea and totara.
“The builders were amazing; their precision was just phenomenal,” one of the vendors said, adding that she designed the kitchen herself, with cabinets in a Mondrian-style grid pattern and a green quartz countertop. She loves keeping the pantry stocked with her bottles and jars of preserves and using the Rayburn wood stove for winter roasts.
With a wellness focus, the owners insisted on bathrooms that bring nature inside. One camping feature made it into the big house: side-by-side outdoor baths.
The 20m heated swimming pool has a striking sculptural concrete slide, by Paul Beaurepaire from BP Sculpt, and is adored by adults and kids.
The permaculture gardens are now four years old. The micro-climate created by the layers in the food forest supports tropical fruits like cherimoya and bananas, while pineapples thrive in the greenhouse. There are pecan trees, berry shrubs, avocado, macadamia nuts and citrus trees.
This is the good life, made large: “In the summer there's nothing better than hopping in the pool after working in the garden for a couple of hours. And the highlight is harvesting and preserving in February and March.
"I love that, filling up my storeroom. You can cook in the Raeburn too, that’s the part I love about it. A roast coming out of there is amazing."
Fresh water ponds, one with a charming gazebo, and planting around the banks of the Glen Eden River support a rich biodiversity. There are chickens and ducks for eggs, and paddocks for grazing stock, although the owner said she “tends not to eat my friends”.
The owners have achieved their self-sufficiency goal, with advanced energy-efficient design in the house from 160 solar panels and battery storage, while water is harvested from the roofs of the house and sheds for home and farm, and the property has its own stormwater infrastructure.
The vendor designed the kitchen herself. Photo / Supplied
The swimming pool comes with a sculptural concrete slide. Photo / Supplied
The 500m of water frontage includes a jetty and floating pontoon, so trips in Kawau Bay and the Hauraki Gulf islands start at their doorstep. Summer means kayaking up and down the river.
But the couple don't get attached to places for long, so are selling for another project.
Bayleys agent Kellie Bissett, who is marketing the property, said that the scale and quality of the Sharp Road estate is unprecedented in her area. “This is one of those exceptional properties. There are few like this,” she said, noting that the RV of $7.325m was way below the property's true value (the search price on OneRoof is over $10m).
Bisset said that the property was being marketed internationally, but because it sits on sensitive land, it is being aimed at Kiwi expats, not AIP visa holders.
- 97 Sharp Road, Matakana, Auckland, is for sale, deadline closes July 16
