- Kurt Gibbons sold his Herne Bay mansion for $38 million to entrepreneur Simon Butler.
- The sale, brokered by Bayleys' Edward Pack, is New Zealand's fourth-highest in the housing market.
- Gibbons' 900sqm home features luxury touches, including a tennis court and $1.5 million in travertine.
Rich-lister property developer Kurt Gibbons got $38 million for his Auckland trophy home, OneRoof can reveal.
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The waterfront mansion on Marine Parade, in Herne Bay, was snapped up a year ago by Kiwi entrepreneur Simon Butler, with the deal brokered by Bayleys prestige agent Edward Pack.
The sale price — more than $10m above RV — stands as New Zealand’s fourth-highest in the housing market and has only now been made public.
OneRoof reached out to Pack and Gibbons for comment on the sale. Pack, who has several big deals under his belt, declined; Gibbons had not replied at the time of publication.
OneRoof got a tour of Gibbons' five-bedroom home when it first hit the market in June 2024.
Property developer Kurt Gibbons: "I'm in the industry, and even I couldn’t stick to budget." Photo / Fiona Goodall
The master bedroom in Gibbons' Marine Parade house makes the most of the view. Photo / Fiona Goodall
The living spaces are stylish and modern. They occupy the ground floor with the sleeping quarters on the top floor. Photo / Fiona Goodall
Gibbons and his wife, Makere, bought the property in 2020 for $23.5m and commissioned architects Fearon Hay to bring it up to international standards.
The money and luxury touches were on full display inside.
At the time of the tour, Gibbons declined to tell OneRoof the final cost of the build, which included earthworks on the cliff front to make a level surface for a tennis court, but admitted that it was “much, much more” than the $8m he had planned to spend.
“These [builds] cost a fortune. I’m in the industry, and even I couldn’t stick to budget,” he said, adding, “It’s done up pretty good, eh?”
At 900sqm in size, the house is one of the biggest in upmarket Herne Bay but as stunning as it is, it’s one the Gibbons have never made their home.
The family relocated to Queenstown during the renovation and have stayed there ever since. “The kids love it down there, my wife loves it, we don’t want to leave,” Gibbons told OneRoof.
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He said of the house: “This is an international-style home. We wanted the master bedroom to have extraordinary views – and be massive. Downstairs, we wanted the kitchen, dining room and lounge to be one big open area and be open to the pool and tennis court.”
The staircase was relocated from the middle of the house to the front, making room for the new master bedroom, a steel and glass box that spans the two Victorian-looking wings of the house. Glass walls slide away to open the room to the water and garden views.
The former master bedroom was turned into a colossal ensuite, while downstairs the original conservatory, which had impeded views of the harbour, was replaced by a matching glass and steel box for the kitchen and living room.
The Gibbons, who love marble, handpicked nearly 100 slabs of special grey-blue travertine, which they used in all the bathrooms, the main kitchen and around the staircase. “The stone alone was $1.5m, and all the cabinets are handcrafted by SCE stone. It’s basically like sculpture,” Gibbons said.
The Marine Parade mansion's bathroom is an ode to marble. "The stone alone was $1.5m," says Gibbons. Photo / Fiona Goodall
The Marine Parade's standout tennis court. Photo / Supplied
The public-facing kitchen is one of four in Gibbons' house. Photo / Fiona Goodall
The house also includes two media rooms – one for the kids, one for the grown-ups – a wine cellar and an outdoor teppanyaki kitchen and barbecue (another kitchen serves the tennis pavilion party room).
The “bigger-than-full-sized tennis court” was for Makere (she was a professional tennis player before her television career with sports show The Crowd Goes Wild). “There are so many zones for entertaining and having friends over,” Gibbons told OneRoof during the tour. “It’s completely private, we don’t get any wind, and we get the sun all day.”
The New Zealand Herald's Society Insider column reported that the house's new owner likes to keep a low profile and made his money in minerals and technology. It is understood he co-founded software company eOne Solutions in Australia in 2000, before expanding into the US market. Contivio, a global leader in cloud-based contact centre solutions, followed later that decade in California.
Butler, Society Insider said, attended Sacred Heart College in Glen Innes, a school known for educating students from a diverse range of backgrounds. There, he was head of house, head prefect and captain of the First XI football team.
The current record holder: Chantecler, on Lower Shotover Road, in Queenstown-Lakes, sold for $45.5 million. Photo / James Allan
A school friend told Society Insider: “Simon likes to keep his success in check, particularly the material aspects that come with it.”
The $38m sale price for Marine Parade is half a million shy of the $38.5m that wealthy international businessman Stone Shi paid for the former Hotchin mansion in Auckland's Paritai Drive more than a decade ago. That formidable home now has an RV of over $72m.
It is also below the circa-$40m that an estate on Remuera's Arney Road fetched last year, and the nationwide house price record of $45.5m, set by Queenstown’s Chantecler estate in 2023.
It is, however, above the $35m that Gibbons' former property developer partner, Ben Cook, got for his Herne Bay waterfront mansion last year.
However, the above sales could all be eclipsed by the Herne Bay mansion that rich-listers Simon and Paula Herbert put on the market last year. The 1075sqm Brent Hulena-designed property was looking for over $50 million and was withdrawn from market earlier this month.
The Cremorne Street home of Simon and Paula Herbert is believed to have sold, but has it broken sale price records? Photo / Supplied
Rich-lister Ben Cook got $35m for his mansion on Sentinel Road, in Auckland’s Herne Bay, last year. Photo / Supplied
When OneRoof asked listing agent Graham Wall if the property had sold, he could not confirm or deny the sale. “I cannot say a single word about it,” he said.
While he could not comment on individual sales, Mark Macky, chief executive of Bayleys Real Estate, told OneRoof that world events had given higher-end buyers the confidence to invest in New Zealand.
“New Zealand is a very safe place to be,” he said, adding that he saw a similar uptick in global interest in our real estate post 9/11. “People thought ‘Oh my goodness, that’s going to have a big impact on New Zealand.' And we saw an influx of global buyers looking for a haven.
“Similarly, we’ve got the Active Investor Plus visa come into play, and we have seen an increase in high-end interest.”
Macky said that agents were introducing buyers around the country, particularly in Auckland, both the city and lifestyle areas like Omaha and Matakana, Hawkes Bay, Bay of Islands and Queenstown Lakes.
- Click here to find more properties for sale in Herne Bay
