- A riverside mansion in Christchurch sold for $9.55m, breaking the city’s house price record.
- The 110-year-old Brenchley estate was sold by Richard and Suzanne Peebles to a local family.
- The property features a 1000sqm floor plan, guest house, indoor pool, and tennis court.
A riverside mansion in Christchurch’s most expensive suburbs has smashed the city’s house price record, selling for $9.55 million.
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The 110-year-old heritage home, known as Brenchley, sold within two weeks of hitting the market.
Harcourts Grenadier announced the sale of Saint Barnabas Lane, in Fendalton, last night, posting on Facebook that the house had eclipsed “every existing Canterbury residential house price record”.
Harcourts listing agent Alison Aitken, who marketed the property with Gemma Tipple, said the sprawling estate had sold to a local family who valued its history.
The six-bedroom mansion was 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
“Homes of this calibre are scarce and it was a privilege to bring it to market. Setting the record for Canterbury residential sale is a true career highlight.”
Aitken confirmed the sale price to OneRoof this morning. At $9.55m, the sale price is more than a $1m above the previous record of $8.1m, achieved by a landmark house in Scarborough dubbed The Rocks. However, it is below the $10m-plus that the vendor had hinted it would fetch.
The six-bedroom home was sold by prominent Christchurch property developer Richard Peebles and wife Suzanne, who bought the property in 2015. The pair spent “millions of dollars” bringing it back to life.
Aitken said with the exception of one buyer, all of the interest had come from Christchurch residents.
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She said a lovely family from Christchurch had bought the home. “They are going to absolutely live there forever and enjoy every bit of it [and] all the space it offers.”
Aitken said the vendors were “very happy” with the result. Although they had initially hoped to get more than $10m, they had decided to take the “quick and clean” offer of $9.55m. She added that she wasn’t surprised the house had found a buyer so quickly.
Aitken told OneRoof earlier this month that Brenchley had been a wonderful family home for the Peebles for the last 10 years: “It certainly worked well as a family home, and a very social house.”
The 1000sqm floor plan included a grand reception, a plush library, formal living and dining rooms, and a media room with a 150-inch screen and Theophany speakers.
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
A guest house, an indoor pool and a summer house overlooking the tennis court sit alongside the main two-storey home on the 3740sqm riverfront site.
Aitken said there had been early international interest in the property, with the city attracting Australian buyers and expats returning from the United Kingdom. However, the end buyer of the historic property was a Christchurch local who bought it 10 days before the tender was due to close on November 24.
The home attracted more than 130,000 online views, but only qualified buyers were shown through the property.
Peebles told OneRoof earlier this month 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.”
Richard Peebles, right, with fellow Christchurch developers Mike Percasky, left, and Kris Inglis. Photo / George Heard
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 their 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.
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.”
An expansive home on Wood Lane, in Fendalton, was snapped up for $8m in early 2024, setting a then 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
Aitken told OneRoof earlier this month that prices had moved significantly in Christchurch. 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.”
Other top agents in Christchurch had told OneRoof that Brenchley would easily smash the city’s house price record. Bayleys agent Adam Heazlewood said: “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.
Carter said a good number of “amazing” properties would sit in the same price bracket as Brenchley, 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.”
* Additional reporting by Catherine Smith
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