- Dale and Maria Gray listed their unfinished Waiheke Island home for $8.75m as build costs escalated.
- The build took twice as long and cost more than $2m above budget, totalling $5.5m.
- The Grays sold their Mount Eden house to manage overruns and moved to a Rocky Bay bach.
The stunning beach home that opened the new series of Grand Designs New Zealand almost didn’t make it to the screen, OneRoof can reveal.
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Aucklanders Dale and Maria Gray listed their half-finished dream house on Waiheke Island as construction costs spiralled out of control.
The property hit the market for sale in February last year with an asking price of $8.75 million and renders showing what it could look like when finished.
The listing agent said it was “destined to be the best home on Palm Beach”.
The couple’s decision to sell wasn’t covered in their episode of Grand Designs New Zealand, but Dale explained to OneRoof why they did it and why they subsequently pulled the listing five months later.
Dale and Maria Gray with Grand Designs New Zealand host Tom Webster. Photo / Supplied
The Grays’ construction project was huge. Covid inflation was a big factor in the cost blowout. Photo / Supplied
“We’d had somebody approach us, saying they might be interested in buying it. We knew the [financial] commitment we had, and it was a hell of a lot more than what we desired,” he said.
“Somebody said, ‘look, you could just test the water’. So we did, but in all honesty, it was pretty half-hearted. If somebody had waltzed in and paid us that amount of money, we would have sold it, but we didn’t really want to sell.”
The Grays’ build took twice as long as they had expected and cost more than $2m above their initial budget, with the price tag stretching to $5.5m for the build alone.
The house is just weeks away from getting its final certificate of completion, and Dale and Maria half-joked that they were considering another project. “Next time, it’s a house with only right angles,” ventured Maria, referring to the standout feature of their Palm Beach home.
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Dale said he’d still be keen on building another big house with a pool, and a massive deck. “And I wouldn’t compromise on the finishes.”
Another build project is more than a pipe dream. The Grays already have the land: they bought a nearby 6165sqm block in 2021 for $3.2m, before they’d even started on their Grand Designs build.
They put the land on the market for sale in September last year, but with no immediate signs of a buyer, they may keep it for themselves. The property is priced at $1.99m, and is listed with Ray White agents Matthew Smith and Shelley Dewar.
“Give us until the end of the year,” Dale said.
The couple’s televised build on Tiri View Road was part of the dream Dale mapped out in incredible detail with a business coach he had engaged to take his recruitment business to the next level.
The Grays are selling a 6165sqm block at 41G Tiri View Road, at Palm Beach, for $1.99m. Photo / Supplied
“I had to write my dream - it had to be tangible and tactile. I was standing on a deck on Waiheke with a pool and a view. [The coach] said, ‘mate, this is insane. I want to help you achieve this’.”
One weekend later and the Grays were on a ferry to Waiheke with appointments booked with real estate agents. They quickly realised that none of the houses for sale matched their dream.
“Renovating something quickly got too hard. We had built a couple of houses with architects before, so we weren’t complete virgins. There were a few sections, but they weren’t big enough. You need at least a couple of thousand square metres for a four-bedroom house,” Dale said.
Friends on the island brought them to Tiri View Road, at Palm Beach, where they proposed buying a 6000sqm block of land that was for sale. Together, the couples subdivided the land into three plots. The Grays and their friends took one plot each, and shared the remaining third (the Grays recently sold their share to their friends).
The Grays’ Grand Designs home is a standout, but the consents and subdivision process was, according to the couple, “f***ing horrendous”. Photo / Supplied
Dale said the subdivision process was “f***ing horrendous” and involved two years of paperwork and planning. “You’ve got to get geotech, you’ve got to get gecko reports, traffic reports for the new driveway, all sorts of protection for the bush around you, a building plan to show the house concept,” he said.
For their build, the Grays approached the Waiheke Island builder they had seen on a previous episode of Grand Designs New Zealand. He advised them to find an architect who knew all of the island’s zoning, geography, and supply quirks – something most city architects had no idea about, Dale said.
“Things like what concrete products you can access out here, the environmental overlays, even when and where you can dump soil. If the local soil dump isn’t taking any more soil, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars to ship it back to Auckland.”
The Grays’ first attempt at a design with Dylan Rhynd was stunning, and boasted green roofs, but it cost around $5m - way more than their budget. Six months later, they landed on a design they hoped would cost around $3m.
The Grays love their new home and, incredibly, would like to tackle something similar again. Photo / Supplied
Dale admitted that even if they knew ahead of time what the house would end up costing and the monumental challenges of the build, they would have still pushed on. “It’s made the house what it is, made the best of the view.”
Ground breaking was in March 2022. Dale reckoned Covid inflation contributed more than $1m to their eventual cost blowout. The biggest error, he said, was breaking the consents into four stages: foundation and earthworks; steel and engineering, and then two finishing stages. The cost of planting and restoring the native vegetation alone was $60,000.
“It got a bit sticky when the builders were catching up to the consent. You can’t do unconsented work, so they were ready to go, but the consents weren’t ready. There was one four-week period where we said, ‘we can’t build’. Things were getting priced with the quantity surveyor right up until January 2024.”
To deal with the mounting cost overruns, the couple sold their Mount Eden house last year and moved to a small bach they already owned in Rocky Bay.
The Grays said it helped that they stayed friends with their engineer, Dale Sheffield of Island Engineering, and their builder, Alex Toye.
“There are only three, maybe six, builders on the island who could do these big builds. Some people bring their builders across from Auckland, but that was never an option. If we’re going to live in Waiheke, we work with Waiheke people,” Dale said.
The Grays are aware of three or four buildings going up with budgets of between $10m and $20m, not counting the land.
They wouldn’t reveal the final bill for the project, but they were happy to say the project was worth it. “It’s so bloody incredible, man. I’ve never been so content. I was down on Palm Beach this morning with the dog. It gives me an incredible uplift in my well-being. It’s a very kind, generous place,” Dale said.
- Click here to find more properties for sale on Waiheke Island
