– Seven-bedroom landmark house on Lake Rotoiti for sale.
– The owners spent around $2m renovating it, transforming it into a modern home.
– After a decade, they are selling up to move to the South Island.
Paul Lambert called the Art Deco landmark on the edge of Lake Rotoiti “his house” almost a year before he bought it.
He spotted a sale sign in front of the seven-bedroom Te Akau Road house while on holiday in Okere Falls with his family in 2014.
Paul and his partner, Nic, were living in Australia at the time, and they had been considering a move back home.
But the idea took hold as Paul and his family crawled past 187E Te Akau Road in their boat. “I would say, ‘I’m going to buy that house’, and they would all laugh at me.”
A new, bigger kitchen has been installed and the area has been opened up to give views over the lake. Photo / Supplied
All five bathrooms were also renovated. Photo / Supplied
Paul kept a close eye on the listing after the holiday ended. “I’d say to Nic, ‘My house is still for sale’. Then it disappeared. And I said, ‘Oh my God, someone has bought my house’, and she said, ‘What do you mean your house’, and I was like, ‘The house in Rotoiti’, and she was like, ‘You are kidding me, right?’.”
A year later, they were back at Lake Rotoiti looking for a holiday home to buy. Out of curiosity, Paul went back to have a look at his “dream” house. He got a surprise when a neighbour told him it hadn’t sold.
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The listing agent, Bayleys’ Beth Millard, made some inquiries and arranged a viewing for Paul. It wasn’t what he expected. “We went through it and I went, ‘Wow, I don’t think we can buy that house’, because the inside layout wasn’t workable.”
Paul may have gotten cold feet, but Nic was hooked. “As soon as she saw it, she was like, ‘I want this house’, but I thought, ‘What would we do with it?’.”
The couple spent the weekend weighing up their options, but Nic won the argument and the couple snapped up the property for just over $1.4 million.
The large home has been sympathetically renovated in keeping with its 1930s character. Photo / Supplied
The 2813sqm property has a wide lake frontage and its own jetty. Photo / Supplied
Paul told OneRoof they spent around $2m more transforming it into a modern home. The extensive renovation took 18 months and included opening up the kitchen to views of the lake and remodelling the five bathrooms.
Paul said the project “kind of snowballed” and they ended up replacing everything from the beams to the roof.
A friend recently told them they had “saved” the house, and Paul agrees. “Because it would have been bulldozed, it would have been cheaper to build a new house, but now it’s something that no one would ever bulldoze.”
The couple had planned to make the house their holiday home, but their plans changed, and they never left. “We came over to New Zealand with two suitcases each, and we never went back to Australia.”
After more than a decade at the house, the couple have decided to sell for a move to the South Island, and engaged Millard to take the property to auction next month.
“This was very much our forever home, but we are kind of in a place that we have a very large house, and we used to fill every bedroom in it, and we don’t really anymore. We do a couple of times a year, but not all the time.”
He added: “We might own a house that’s more expensive, but we will never own a house that’s as well known.”
Lawn-to-lake access, a jetty and a single-level home were the top things people wanted when looking for a lake property. “Those are the real must-haves.”
Interest so far had been from people in Tauranga, Mount Maunganui, Auckland and Waikato looking for either a holiday home or a permanent residence.
“The State Highway 33 side of the lake is particularly popular with people from Mount Maunganui and Tauranga because they can still do their Saturday morning sport with their children and then [travel] to the lake in the afternoon and still feel like they’ve had a whole weekend there.”
Millard was unable to give a price indication, adding that there was nothing of this size or quality that had been for sale for quite some time. The most expensive property to sell in Lake Rotoiti is a property with two dwellings on Okere Road, which sold for around $7m in March 2023.
– 187E Te Akau Road, Okere Falls, Lake Rotoiti, goes to auction on November 11