- Jane Martin bought a Wellington home sight unseen in 2018 before New Zealand’s property market restrictions.
- She renovated it with sustainable methods, including radiant heating and fibre reinforced polymer stairs.
- After nearly seven years, Martin is selling the home, now transformed into a low-maintenance haven.
When architect Jane Martin decided to move to New Zealand from the US to complete her PhD, she got out a map of Wellington and marked the midway point between Victoria University’s Kelburn campus and Zealandia wildlife sanctuary.
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“I was like, ‘What’s this little place in the middle?’, and it was Aro Valley, specifically Norway Street,” Martin told OneRoof. “I pulled up property for sale, and there was 58 Norway, and it was going to auction.”
That was March 2018, and Martin knew, as a foreign buyer, she was about to be locked out of New Zealand’s property market. She got on the phone to Harcourts listing agent Jane Park and got herself ready. “The window was closing, so I thought, if I’m going to do this, let me do it now. And I did.”
Martin made significant changes to the home and gave it a fresh, eco-friendly look. Photo / Supplied
What the property looked like when Martin bought it sight unseen in 2018. Photo / Supplied
Martin, who’s now a New Zealand resident, was still overseas when the three-bedroom 1950s-era home hit the auction floor. “I bought it sight unseen over the phone at auction. But as an architect, I look at buildings all day long. I read the builder’s report and know buildings enough to see that if it were even three-quarters of what they said it would be, it would be worthwhile. And it was.”
The vendor was a Kiwi bachelor, she said, and the house had an air of number 8 wire about it. But this gave Martin the chance to create her own paradise.
Kiwi architecture wasn’t entirely new to her. “I’d been visiting New Zealand since 2015 and touring the country. I’d rent a car for a couple of weeks and just drive around and see how people were living. As an architect, I’m always looking at buildings and houses. That style appealed to me.”
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After winning at auction with a $652,000 bid, Martin flew to New Zealand to pick up the keys but didn’t fully relocate until months later. “I wasn’t even accepted into the PhD program, so I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I came, got the keys, and went back to the US. And then I sorted my life out so that I could come live here.”
The very first job Martin did at her new home was to fix the heating, although it would be wrong to assume that because she emigrated from California, she found Wellington cold. “I’m from the Midwest where we have deep winter, with ice and snow, a metre deep. I know what cold is,” she said.
She told OneRoof she installed a retrofit radiant in-floor hydronic central heating system, which she has seen only one other example of in New Zealand.
The property is stylishly dressed. Martin says she is open to negotiating with buyers on selling the contents. Photo / Supplied
Martin hired a professional bush restoration company to bring her grounds to life. Photo / Supplied
Other notable improvements included the fibre reinforced polymer stairs - “they have been referred to by people other than me as the perfect Wellington stair, and I agree,” Martin said - double glazing, and blown insulation in the walls.
Sustainability was a key factor in the design, and Martin didn’t send a single skip to landfill during the renovation. For example, instead of ripping out the slightly sagging ceiling, she brought the joists back to level, added a layer of structural plywood, and another of woven bamboo.
“One of my areas of expertise is sustainability and sustainable construction, so I try to avoid paints when I can. You wouldn’t want to live next to a paint factory is the way I think of it. By using that woven bamboo, which is a finished material, it’s job done. You install it and walk away.”
Martin calls her home an ultra-low-maintenance haven. Photo / Supplied
As well as providing a blank canvas for Martin’s architectural brain, the property has become a laboratory for her doctoral research. She is focused on decolonising landscapes, and she embarked on a journey to convert her new home into an ultra-low-maintenance haven, demonstrating how a property can be both a personal sanctuary and a catalyst for broader ecological and social change.
Much of Martin’s practice in the US involved creating landscape design as part of an overall package. When she started considering her PhD, the human geography programme at Victoria University of Wellington jumped out. “I had never heard of [human geography], but a friend of mine who knows my landscape design said, ‘You know, that’s going to be better suited to your work’. And it totally is a fit. It’s in geography, environment, and earth sciences school. [Decolonising landscapes] is about rolling back some of the changes that people over the generations have made to natural landscapes.”
At her property, Martin does what she calls full-contact gardening. But she found the weeding of the Aro Valley property to be somewhat “futile” and “frustrating”.
“So long story short, I invited my neighbours and, in the end, we were 20 properties. We went together to hire a professional bush restoration company. Over a period of two and a half years, they did the weed control and then planting out native bush species. I refer to that as the Backyard Bush Project.
“It’s beyond low maintenance. Basically, the bush takes care of itself.”
The other major outdoor project was transforming the garage into a studio and digging out a pad at the very front of the section for two cars to park side-by-side.
After nearly seven years in her Wellington home, Martin is selling up and moving on to a new project. “I don’t need a three-bedroom home. Now that I’ve got it to the point that it can really be used by a family or a group of people, I hope that it is. I’m selling it now because I’m relocating for another opportunity. And mostly because I’m finished, I got down to the end of my to-do list.”
Martin is taking her home to auction and has even engaged the listing agent she called ahead of her own purchase, with Harcourts’ Park and colleague Carla Tambis highlighting the stylish changes she has made.
The auction, on August 8, is for the empty house, but nearly all of the contents are available by negotiation, Martin said, adding that plans for various improvements could also be passed on to the buyer.
- 58 Norway Street, Aro Valley, Wellington, goes to auction on August 8
