- Jayne Kiely is selling her Whangamata bach after owning it for ten years.
- The property, renovated from a classic Kiwi bach, includes a main house and guesthouse.
- Kiely cites busy schedules and her sons living in London as reasons for selling.
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It's a case of location, location, location for Jayne Kiely, co-presenter of the hit TV show of the same name. She is selling her Whangamata bach, albeit with some sadness.
“There will be tears,” the Ray White Remuera real estate agent told OneRoof. She has owned the beach pad at 416 Rangi Avenue for 10 years, and it's one in which she can slip off her real estate agent and TV celebrity personas.
“It was a good retreat for me getting out of Auckland. You come down here and you don't wash your hair for a couple of weeks and you don't put your makeup on and you get the sand between your toes; you're not wearing high-heeled shoes.
“As soon as you drive into town, into Whangamata, it's such a great vibe.”
Jayne Kiely with her dog on the beach. She says Whangamata has been a great retreat. Photo / Fiona Goodall
The five-bedroom bach has been the perfect entertaining space for Kiely and her family. Photo / Supplied
Kiely often gets a friendly “hi Jayne” or a smile from people she doesn’t know because of her TV show, though not always.
She says she was in the supermarket the other day with her unwashed hair up in a bun and no make-up on when she was in the midst of getting the property ready for sale.
“I'm probably a bit hot and sweaty because I was off buying some cleaning products, and I'm literally in my cleaning gear and this lady looked at me and she shook her head and said ‘No, that's not her.'”
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Kiely says she looked “frightful”, but no one in the town cares: “They're just very friendly, very lovely people.”
Kiely’s bach – more a house, these days – is back from the white-sand surf beach but only a 120-second walk there.
And not being beachfront can be an advantage, she says, not least the fact “you can save yourself two million bucks.
“With the weather and the squalls and easterlies we've been having in the last few days we're actually really sheltered tucked in here, so it's quite nice.”
The property had a classic Kiwi bach vibe when Kiely and her family bought it 10 years ago. Photo / Supplied
The agent says she saw potential and spent years giving the beach home a makeover. Photo / Supplied
When she and the family purchased the property in 2016, for $875,000, it was a classic Kiwi bach on a decent section with a rickety gate and an unassuming little house.
Kiely walked in, took in the blue kitchen and orange benchtop, and saw potential.
“Ten years ago the boys were 17 and 15 and it was just the perfect cricket pitch. It was the perfect rugby pitch. It was the perfect soccer pitch and it was a reasonably flat site two minutes to the beach so it was like, ‘Wow, this is great.’
“We knew we could do something special with it. When you've got young boys, or teenage boys, they could all have their friends here with tents, so many tents, so many people staying, so it was just a brilliant spot for teenagers to hang out all summer. It wasn't a flash house or anything and we just loved it.”
The bach is close to the beach and has an RV of just under $2m. Photo / Supplied
The original blue kitchen that got Kiely excited. Photo / Supplied
They went on to gut the house and renovated so everything inside is new, bar one shower. Rooms were rearranged with two bedrooms lost in the process of making the “teeny, tiny” lounge into a great big one, but the bedrooms were regained when they added a guesthouse.
“When we decided to build the guesthouse we got those two rooms back and it just meant as the boys got older and they wanted their space, and we wanted them to have their space because we wanted our space in the main house, and they had the guesthouse, so it worked really well.”
Nobody would recognise the original house anymore and it’s now a home, not a bach, she says.
“I can definitely see someone retiring here because the main house is single level as well, and the guesthouse, so if they wanted a second income, if they wanted to Airbnb it, or whatever, it's quite separate as well, so there's a lot of different scenarios for new buyers for this place.”
Kiely with her Location Location Location NZ co-host Paul Glover. Photo / Supplied
It has been a bit of a challenge being on the other side of real estate and getting her own property ready for sale, she admits. “I'm looking at every leaf that blows in here and going, ‘Oh, my God, get that leaf out of here’ like a crazy woman.
“And I do know what goes into presenting a home for an open home or for the market because a lot of the people that we sell for, especially if it's a young couple and it's their first home on the market, Amy [her colleague and sales partner Amy Robertson] and I are constantly getting people cushions and throws, duvets, a bit of artwork.”
Her car is full of pillows, blankets, vases, magazines and coffee table books, she says. “I literally empty my boot out every time.”
Kiely has taken her own advice on decluttering, clearing out the pantry and making sure everything is folded neatly in the linen closet.
“Bar from karate chopping my cushions, we’re ready to go.”
The property has only just been listed but there has already been interest with local agents bringing people through and lining up others for the open homes.
Whangamata can be hard to break into, she says, but friends with a bach there found this one for Kiely’s family.
“A lot of stuff sells off market down here as well because agents have a little black book and they've got people that are looking.”
Much as she loves the property, the family is not using it as much as they should and it’s time to sell, she says.
“I'm busy in Auckland. Not only am I doing real estate, I've been filming Location, Location, Location and we're just not getting down here as much, and the boys are both living in London and who knows when they're coming back so it's probably time to pass the baton over to someone else now. This house needs a family again.”
The last little while has been spent getting the property 100% ready for the new buyer who shouldn't have anything to do to it for some time, she says.
“I think the market, like any market, whether it's Auckland or Whangamata or Queenstown or Dunedin, if it's a nice property and it ticks a lot of boxes and it's kind of turnkey living, they always resonate.
“If it's a bit quirky or it needs work for whatever reason, facing the wrong way, it's going to be tougher to sell, but when you walk in and you live then it's much easier to sell.”
- 416 Rangi Avenue, Whangamata, Thames-Coromandel, goes to auction on February 7
