- Debbie Aldred is selling Kawau Island properties remotely while on a South Pacific sailing adventure.
- Kawau Island is accessible by sea or air, with challenging terrain and limited amenities.
- Aldred emphasises the island’s remote lifestyle, warning potential buyers of its unique challenges and beauty.
Debbie Aldred is on WhatsApp talking about her listings on Kawau Island from a French Polynesian atoll with sharks swimming around her boat, bringing remote working to a whole other level.
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The real estate agent, of Debbie Aldred Real Estate, is on a sailing adventure in the South Pacific but still selling thanks to technology.
“I’ve got everyone’s LIMs and property files on Google Drive and the Cloud on the computer, and you can answer any question whatsoever and speak to people,” she tells OneRoof.
Aldred was on day 57 of her adventure at the time of speaking – she leaves an update each day on Facebook so clients and followers can “keep an eye on her”.
Aldred is sailing the world but is staying close to her real estate business. Photo / Facebook
The veteran agent has done hard yards and used to train agents in Australia. She would say to them: “What are people going to say about you at your funeral – do you think they’re really going to say, ‘She was a great agent’, or, ‘Did you have a great life?’.”
Hence her sailing adventure, which will see her away until September but still working her listings as New Zealand heads deeper into winter, and she, in turn, encounters sharks in idyllic settings.
At one point, she interrupts the conversation to say five sharks were “running around our boat now”, followed by, “Oh, my God, the water is so clear it’s insane.”
“We’re in a lovely place called Raroia, which is a remote atoll in the Tuamotus and that is in French Polynesia,” she says.
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The sharks were black tips so not huge but the other day when swimming a two-and-a-half metre shark came up to her.
“I thought, ‘Oh, my God, they are so big under water, aren’t they?’ I don’t think these ones will attack you. It’s the tiger sharks you’ve got to watch out for. We are in the wild. It’s pretty remote here.”
Mainly, though, we speak about Kawau Island in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf, which is remote in its own way, accessible only by sea or air.
Kawau is about 15 minutes by private boat from Sandspit on the Mahurangi Peninsula, and Sandspit is about an hour’s drive north from Auckland central.
Aldred lives in Sandspit and is Commodore of the local Sailing Club. She says the boat trip to Kawau is short if you have your own boat but most people take the ferry, which meanders through the bays and can take over an hour, plus it costs $80-plus return per adult which can add up, and water taxis are more expensive.
Once on the island, many of her listings are steep and challenging. Aldred says she makes the challenges as clear as possible to buyers to weed out the “dreamers”.
Fun on the pier at Kawau island. Photo / Getty Images
“Quite often you lose them straight away. Fifty percent of them go, ‘Ah, if it’s that expensive, I don’t want to live there’.
“I do make them take the ferry. Number one, it shows their dedication, and they do need to realise there is a cost to living on this island – it’s really important they understand the difficulty and the challenges of living on the island.”
Aldred says she drills down to find out why the potential buyer wants to go there: “As soon as they start asking where the nearest cafe is you’ve basically got to shut them down because it’s just not going to happen.”
Neither are there shops, and while there are two roads they are not public roads, and there is no car ferry, and sometimes getting to sites is an issue.
One of her listings, for example, is 165 Bon Accord Harbour, a 1.69-hectare site with a jetty and spectacular views, but it’s pretty hard to get up to the building site.
One of Aldred's listings, 165 Bon Accord Harbour, is on the market for $595,000. Photo / Supplied
The property has a price tag of $595,000. Aldred says it was impacted when Cyclone Gabrielle struck in 2023. The land suffered significant damage with runoff carving through the hillside, toppling pines, and overgrowing a well-prepped site.
She wrote in her listing that underneath the chaos lay an incredible opportunity, telling OneRoof the listing was her most popular despite the issues because the north-facing land had amazing views at the top and a private wharf at the bottom.
“It is really, really beautiful. It’s almost impossible to get north-facing with a private jetty in Kawau. In fact, I haven’t had one for a few years now. This is the first one for ages, since I last sold this one, actually.”
But the hill slid away and while there is consent for a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house, buyers would need to get a geotech report, she says.
The site has its own water tanks and septic system, and a digger and other machinery, which all go with the sale, and while access is a problem, it’s not insurmountable. Aldred says an option is to put in a sky lift, which others have done on the island and which locals call gondolas.
Another Aldred listing, a 5521sqm block at 4 Schoolhouse Bay Road, offers one of the best grandstand views on Kawau. Photo / Supplied
“They cost about a quarter of a million dollars but they’re absolutely fantastic. I’ve got a few properties over there with them. You just jump in a little box and get taken straight up to the top of the hill.”
Though a sky lift was an expense, the buyer will also get a private wharf worth about $250,000.
Aldred expects the eventual buyer to not necessarily be super wealthy but perhaps to have a building background.
She says there are about 60 permanent residents on Kawau and a couple of hundred houses. After Covid, people were drawn there and a lot of people who had baches decided to live there instead, ordering their groceries online and having them delivered for a fee.
There’s a tight community and “fantastic” emergency services, including heart resuscitation machines, an emergency jet ski and rescue helicopter landing pads in various places.
The volunteer fire service is “fantastic” as well, and Aldred says locals are fiercely protective of the island.
Despite weeding out the tyre kickers as best she can, Aldred says there are still plenty of dreamers who come out to look, but to those tempted she warns Kawau is not like Waiheke Island which has shops, wineries and restaurants: “It’s absolutely not like Waiheke.
“Half my properties are 285 steps up very a steep hill, and if you have more than two wines up the top, you have to be very careful coming down.
“They are just a fabulous community, they really are. They have book clubs over there and a lot of volunteer groups. The Kawau Ratepayers Association is very strong, they meet together on quite a regular basis and take control of what’s going on in the island.”
Often generations of families holiday there, and once people buy, they usually leave the property to the next generation, she says. “I think it’s keeping families together more than anything; getting away from the rat race. It really is peaceful.”
There are some children on the island who go to school on the mainland, and properties range from a few hundred thousand dollars into the millions so there is something for every budget.
Aldred says she is getting a lot of interest from Australians and expats currently, and Americans since Donald Trump was elected US President.
She had an inquiry recently from an expat in the US who has an 80-foot yacht. He told her: “I’ve had enough, I’m coming home forever.”
While the island does not have a wharf large enough to accommodate the size of his yacht, another couple just bought a “wreck of a house” for around $325,000 and were planning a big renovation.
Aldred says there are people in their eighties living there who don’t want to leave and usually the reason for selling is because they are getting too old for the terrain.
Another of her listings is a caravan at the top of a steep site with beautiful views and a weka in one of the photos.
“There are loads of wekas over there. There’s a few kiwis and wallabies, and loads of wood pigeons, kereru, loads of them. A lot of the ladies always talk about the birds and the animals over there. They absolutely love it.”
The wallabies are left over from when Sir George Grey, Governor of New Zealand in the 1860s, bought Kawau, building the Mansion House, which is still there, and bringing in exotic animals.
Today’s residents are people who wear shorts and T-shirts and Aldred reckons there is something quirky or eccentric about just about every property on the island, from 1940s baches to new builds with pools – one property she sold had a tiger worm toilet system with millions of tiger worms: “Every time I go there [to Kawau] I’m just fascinated.”
Last year, a baby pygmy blue whale wedged itself under a private wharf on the island: “There is always something strange going on.”
Aldred says people should not be put off getting in touch with her just because she is away on her boat, saying she is not hard to get hold of: “I spend a lot of time in very odd places answering phones and doing emails, believe me.”
- Click here to find more properties for sale on Kawau Island
