The new owners of the townhouse had been mulling over a neighbouring house that was also on the market, but wanted something bigger and better, OneRoof reported.
Vivacity agent Aaron Pero’s mind immediately jumped to the most expensive property in the Cranmer Tce development he was selling – a rounded four-storey three-bedroom, three-bathroom townhouse called the Rotunda.
The couple were instantly taken by its design, he said, and weren’t at all bothered by the fact the kitchen and the joinery in the wardrobes had not been fitted.
“They loved the curved rooms and the scale of it. It’s basically perfect for them,” Pero told OneRoof.
Pero said selling the luxury new build without the kitchen was a cunning move from the developer Huadu who hadn’t wanted to put something in that might put the buyer off.
“The developer didn’t want to spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars putting a kitchen in there and wardrobe joinery in there that potentially the buyer would hate because it is very unique so we thought the buyer would be very unique as well.
“So we could put in a light French oak kitchen and they get in there and go that’s disgusting, we want it be very broody and dark timbers and things like that.”
The bespoke townhouse had been kitted out with everything except for the kitchen, he said.
“You’ve got tiled bathrooms, you’ve got carpet, you’ve got timber flooring, you’ve got underfloor heating, you’ve got a lift. So you’ve got a lift that takes you from the ground floor up to the fourth storey.”
The property settled this week and the owners would be moving in with some extremely basic cooking facilities. A kitchen sink and two cupboards had been installed as a token gesture so the developer could get a code of compliance, OneRoof reported.
Pero said they had already designed their new kitchen and it would be installed in the new year.
“So they might be enjoying some of the surrounding restaurants until they get their own kitchen.”
On top of the $2.9m paid for the new townhouse, they also had to shell out anywhere between $50,000 and $200,000, which Pero said would be the likely cost for the kitchen. Joinery for all the wardrobes and window treatments were also needed.
The Rotunda was the only townhouse in the development where the developers had decided it sell it as a “warm shell” and he believed it had been a success.
“It does give people the opportunity to make something their own without impacting the developers too much either.”
“The reason they didn’t just have this completely empty as a proper shell is because the consent was tied in with the other 43 townhouses so if they hadn’t finished it by putting the tiles in, the showers and the tiny little kitchen they put in, they wouldn’t be able to get code of compliance for all the other ones which means they wouldn’t be able to settle them.
“I had some buyers I took through it and they were talking about doing quite big changes to it – like ripping out all the carpets and ripping out all the floors and redoing all the bathrooms.”
Pero said there was still demand for luxury apartments in the CBD, mainly from retirees, but they usually had very specific requirements including park views, north-facing, at least 150sq m with two car parks on a single level with lift access.
“You are probably talking at least $3m for something like that and it doesn’t actually exist.”
This was because it was hard to find the right site in the city and the high cost of building an apartment block in Christchurch was often cost prohibitive for developers who tended to favour building townhouses as they were more cost effective, he said.
