- Auckland’s Kohimarama Lodge is back on the market after a buyer failed to settle.
- Peter Coker said the buyer lost their deposit after not completing the $1.275m purchase.
- The motel, capable of grossing $500,000 annually, was transformed over 11 years by Coker.
A boutique motel is up for grabs again – just months after it sold and the buyer failed to settle.
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Real estate agent Peter Coker, who owns Kohimarama Lodge, in Auckland’s Kohimarama, listed the property for sale in May last year.
He found a buyer a few months later, who made an offer that was conditional on finance and due diligence. After a lengthy back and forth, the deal went unconditional, and a significant deposit was paid.
But the buyer never followed through, and Coker and his wife, Sheryl, are now having to repeat the marketing and sale process.
He told OneRoof that the buyer lost his deposit after pulling out of the deal.
Coker said in his 25 years as an agent, he had sold over 500 properties, but he had never encountered a scenario where a buyer walked away after paying a deposit.
Real estate agent Peter Coker and his wife, Sheryl, poured their hearts and souls into the renovation of the tired motel. Photo / Supplied
Each unit has a different theme, and is a showcase for Coker’s passion for art and design. Photo / Supplied
“Settlement was supposed to be the 30th of September, but they extended that a couple of weeks, so we got into October, and then they never settled.”
As per the law, a notice was served to the buyer, but Coker and his wife heard nothing back. “We never heard anything. They just disappeared, so the lawyers and everybody, we all kind of sat around waiting to find out whether anything was going to happen,” Coker told OneRoof.
“Nothing did. We got to Christmas, and then we decided, in conjunction with the lawyer, let’s put it back on the market again and start again, so that’s what’s happened. We’ve just put it on the market a couple of weeks ago.”
He said the ordeal had left the couple out of pocket. He and his wife had moved the furniture out of the property ahead of the settlement date and had rented a property they never used.
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Last month, OneRoof featured a report that involved another buyer who had also lost their deposit.
“Whitianga’s fanciest beach shed” was relisted within months of selling for $571,000 at a tense $1 reserve auction after the South Island buyer paid the deposit but failed to pay the remaining sum by the agreed settlement date.
Bayleys listing agent Belinda Sammons said she had never experienced that before in her 24-year career in real estate. That property went on to resell for the same amount three months later.
Coker hopes the market has improved since the couple first listed the leasehold motel, which is for sale for $1.275m plus GST.
He said the lodge was a revenue-generating business, so the leasehold was like paying rent. “If you were opening a cafe down on the corner, you wouldn’t go and buy the building and the land, you just open the cafe and pay rent and hopefully make enough money to pay the rent. This is no different.”
5 Carina Way, in Whitianga, fetched $571,000 this month - the same amount it got at a $1 reserve auction in October. Photo / Supplied
The motel had the ability to gross $500,000 a year, he said, and had a lot of repeat customers.
OneRoof’s article profiling the property in May last year described how Coker and his wife had transformed “one of the city’s saddest” 1960s motels into accommodation with themed units.
Coker said he used to walk past the then Florida Motel on Speight Road on his way to work and hatched a plan to buy the nine-bedroom, nine-bathroom property, including manager’s quarters.
Renamed the Kohimarama Lodge, the couple attacked one unit at a time over 11 years, turning all but one into themed rooms, from Kiwi Bach to The Elvis.
The lodge has an RV of $4.3m and is being marketed by Lesley Harris and Wayne Maguire, of Ray White.
Property lawyer Joanna Pidgeon told OneRoof that the forfeiting of deposits wasn’t all that unusual, but was more often found in development sales, where settlement dates are lengthy.
“For example, a lot of those long-term contracts are often developers buying land with long-term settlements, so they don’t have to fund holding the land while they’re applying for their resource consent and building consent.”
Developments had been harder to get off the ground, and it had been harder to get pre-sales, she said, and in long-term contracts, interest rates, markets and banking rules could change, so people got caught and were unable to settle because the numbers no longer stacked up the way they did when they signed up.
She said sometimes people’s personal situations might change, such as job losses or marriage breakups and sometimes decisions were made to cut their losses.
- 11 Speight Road, Kohimarama, Auckland, is for sale with an asking price of $1.275m plus GST
