- A riverside mansion aims to break Christchurch’s house price record with a sale over $10m.
- Owner Richard Peebles is passionate about heritage homes and brought this one back to life after the quake.
- Top agents believe Christchurch has several $10m-plus homes, with demand from local and international buyers.
In Queenstown-Lakes, homes are trading hands for as much as $18 million, and in Auckland, one waterfront stunner is on the lookout for a buyer with more than $40m to spend.
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But in Christchurch, where trophy sales tend to fly under the radar, a riverside mansion at 5 Saint Barnabas Lane, in Fendalton, is aiming to make real estate history by selling for more than $10m.
Such a sale would be a big deal for the city, where the highest settled sale price is $8.1m, achieved last year for a landmark house dubbed The Rocks.
However, top Christchurch agents have told OneRoof that there are plenty of high-end homes that could join 5 Saint Barnabas Lane in the $10m-plus club, and that there are wealthy buyers present if they ever come to market.
Harcourts listing agent Alison Aitken said there was nothing like 5 Saint Barnabas Lane, known locally as Brenchley, for sale in Christchurch.
The six-bedroom mansion has been put on the market by Christchurch developer Richard Peebles after undergoing a multimillion-dollar restoration. Photo / Supplied
The house is one of the city’s finest and boasts a high quality finish. Photo / Supplied
The owner, prominent Christchurch property developer Richard Peebles, was passionate about heritage homes and brought this one back to life.
Peebles spent millions of dollars on the property, and Aitken said he and wife Suzanne, had spent a wonderful 10 years there. “It certainly worked well as a family home, and a very social house,” she said.
The agents were qualifying buyers with viewings by appointment only.
The house, which sits on 3740sqm, was positioned perfectly for privacy, she said. “It’s so light and bright. Every room is light. All the living rooms face northwest. You’ve got no dark parts of a house, where you have in some old traditional homes.”
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In her listing on OneRoof, Aitken said the six-bedroom house was “meticulously designed and constructed by the illustrious England Brothers in 1915”.
“Boasting over 1000sqm of luxuriously appointed accommodation across three separate buildings, [Brenchley] is a beautifully restored two-storey heritage home, [with] a guest house, an indoor pool, and a charming summer house overlooking the tennis court.”
Other highlights include a grand reception, a plush library, formal living and dining rooms, and a media room with a 150-inch screen and Theophany speakers.
Aitken said she already had international interest in the property, and noted that the city in general had attracted the attention of Australian buyers and expats coming home from the United Kingdom.
Brenchley’s gardens were designed by Peebles’ wife, Suzanne. Photo / Supplied
The property comes with an indoor pool as well as a tennis court. Photo / Supplied
Prices had moved significantly in Christchurch, she said. A few years ago the big talk was around $3m sales - and Aitken said when she made her first sale in 1992 it was for almost $1m and made the front page of the newspaper.
Christchurch was still great value compared to Auckland but had moved up a lot in the last 10 years with all the post-earthquake rebuilding, she said. “So many new homes have been built since the earthquake, which have cost huge amounts of money in prime locations.”
Peebles told OneRoof that prior to the Christchurch earthquakes, Brenchley’s previous owners, the Smith family, had spent around $11m restoring the property. “They had bought the neighbouring property and knocked it down, turned it into a tennis court.”
They refurbished the house and built the pool house, moving in in 2010, but then the earthquake struck that year: “I can attest to how squeaky those big old houses were in that quake. They never came back, so it was boarded up.”
Peebles bought the house in 2015 and was interviewed by the vendors about his plans for it. “They wanted to make sure that whoever was going to buy it was going to restore it rather than knock it down, because they could have got more money just on the land.”
Initially, the Peebles lived in the pool house and partitioned off rooms in the garage for his four young children.
The refurbishment of the main house was undertaken with a friend from high school, Peter Wright, a “real old-school builder” who moved into the old house.
A lot of the walls were damaged and all the chimneys had fallen down. “The front entrance was crushed and really, really damaged,” he said, adding that they had to cut the floors out of several rooms because they had sunk.
Peebles said the family spent millions of dollars on the project, but the refurbishment was still cost-effective, and his wife Suzanne did the garden design.
Richard Peebles, right, with fellow Christchurch developers Mike Percasky, left, and Kris Inglis. Photo / George Heard
Some years ago the house was featured in a gardening magazine and a 93-year-old woman who used to live there wrote them a letter, he said. “She sent a picture of her and a wee letter and a booklet about her memories of Brenchley in the 1920s.”
The house was also known as the Christchurch “party house” in the 2000s. “Whenever I went out, there wasn’t a person I met that hadn’t been there ... jumped out of the window into the swimming pool,” Peebles said.
He said the restoration meant a lot to him and his family. “After we finished it, we thought we could hear her thanking us for saving her.”
Other top agents in Christchurch believe Brenchley will easily smash the city’s house price record. “With what that home [5 Saint Barnabas Lane] offers, I don’t see why it can’t crack 10. It was only a matter of time,” Bayleys agent Adam Heazlewood told OneRoof.
An expansive home on Wood Lane, in Fendalton, was snapped up for $8m in early 2024, setting a new price record in the city. Photo / Supplied
Several weeks later, an architectural masterpiece on Whitewash Head Road, in Scarborough, sold for $8.1m. Photo / Supplied
“A while ago, you’d do a cartwheel every time something sold over $5m, and now we do them quite regularly. It’s much more normalised. There’s clearly been a market change in the last five years.”
Heazlewood said the reason there were not more $8m or $10m sales in Christchurch was that owners were not putting them on the market. “People underestimate the local strength, but all the high-end sales in Christchurch have been to locals,” he said.
Harcourts agent Cameron Bailey said he had plenty of clients who had spent well over $10m on building their homes, and those properties could sell for big money if they ever went on the market. “The buyers are there,” he said.
“The whole market has moved. We’ve seen land value bounce up in the last year, so when people are paying that much for land, it makes sense that houses are worth that much.”
Rosa Carter, owner of New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty’s Christchurch office, agreed that there was “100%” an appetite for $10m-plus sales in the city.
Harcourts agent Cameron Bailey says there are homes in Christchurch that could easily command over $10m if they hit the market. Photo / George Heard
“I do think Brenchley will break $10m. It’s not my listing, but I’m familiar with the property and everything about it.”
Carter said a good number of “amazing” properties would sit in the same price bracket, based on land value and the quality of the build. “There’s definitely the demand from buyers at that level, both in New Zealand and overseas.”
Most of the city’s $10m-plus homes were built post-earthquake, she said, but not all. “Brenchley is a good example, but there are others that have benefited from incredible restorations, no expense spared.”
While most of the city’s top-end properties were on big sections, compared to the average home, they were not sprawling estates, she said. “To be honest, many of these owners don’t want the upkeep of massive land. They want something that they can fly in or be at home. They’re usually busy executives or have other homes around the world."
There was definite wealth in Christchurch at that level, she said: “Once one sells, then it’s a domino effect.”
Sotheby’s was working with Auckland buyers who had come from the Remuera office, who were looking at homes in the $20m to $30m market in Auckland, so for them $10m to $20m in Christchurch was “easy”.
She also agreed that Christchurch was on the radar of overseas buyers: “Not as strong as Auckland and Queenstown, but it’s definitely on their radar.”
Her office recently sold a $3m home to a Singaporean national who had wanted a weekend getaway, noting that Christchurch was one flight from Singapore.
Buyers at the top end typically did not provide a budget as the issue was the home, not the price, she said. “It has to be something special that meets their needs. I think it’s a really exciting time for Christchurch because it’s finally coming into its maturity. It’s long overdue.”
- 5 Saint Barnabas Lane, in Fendalton, Christchurch, is for sale, deadline closing November 26
