– A sustainable Wellington home sold for $910,000, far exceeding its $590,000 RV.
– The 1950s Aro Valley house, renovated by US architect Jane Martin, attracted significant interest.
– The buyers, a young couple, secured the home after a five-week search, despite limited access.
A sustainable home nestled among native plantings in Wellington sold under the hammer to first-home buyers last week for $910,000, leaving the $590,000 RV in the dust.
Harcourts listing agent Jane Park told OneRoof that there had been keen interest in the renovated Aro Valley house, with three unconditional ready-to-go bidders in the room and another two conditional offers waiting in the wings.
The buyers had been looking for about five weeks, Park said. “I call them my miracle buyers because no one gets a house within five weeks in this city. It’s a very hard place to buy a house and get your head around what prices are.”
She added: “They’re a lovely young couple, really excited about moving in.”
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
The house was a 1950s home that had undergone a sympathetic renovation.
“It was full of comfort, you know, double-glazed, beautiful under-floor heating, insulated, so just very comfortable. Very unassuming, but you could move in and not have to do any work, and I think that was very appealing.
“We had 97 groups through the property over a three-week campaign. We did attract people from all price ranges, and so the auction was a great way to find that price.”
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One drawback was the limited access. Park added: “You’ve got to be careful in Wellington that you don’t think something’s worth more than it is if it’s got access that is challenging. I mean, it wasn’t that challenging, but it’s always a tricky kind of equation to put a value on a house with steps up.”
But there are only about 67 steps to the house and they were very good, engineered steps, she said.
This is the second time Park has sold the house at auction. In 2018 she sold it to the vendor, US architect Jane Martin, who bought it sight unseen from overseas.
The property is stylishly dressed. Martin says she was 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
Martin told OneRoof last month that when she decided to move to New Zealand from the United States to complete her PhD, she got out a map of Wellington and marked the midway point between Victoria University’s Kelburn campus and the Zealandia wildlife sanctuary.
“I was like, ‘What’s this little place in the middle?’, and it was Aro Valley, specifically Norway Street. I pulled up property for sale, and there was 58 Norway, and it was going to auction.”
Back in 2018, Martin knew she needed to get in ahead of the incoming foreign buyer ban, so she bought the property over the phone for $652,000. “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,” Martin told OneRoof.
Martin calls her home an ultra-low-maintenance haven. Photo / Supplied
Martin said the previous owner was a bachelor, and she described the house as having an air of number 8 wire about it.
First, she fixed the heating, installing a retrofit radiant in-floor hydronic central heating system, and she also put in fibre-reinforced polymer stairs, double-glazing, and insulation.
Sustainability was a key factor in the design, and not a single skip was sent to landfill during the renovation.
“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.”
She told OneRoof that her work in the US involved creating landscape design, and so the human geography programme at the Victoria University of Wellington had jumped out at her for her PhD.
“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.”
She said she created a natural bush environment along with neighbours, but decided to sell and move on to a new project after seven years there.