Record NZ house sale: Andersons Cove luxury estate said to have fetched over $40m
The sale of a Pacific-style home 90 minutes north of Auckland at Andersons Cove is said to have set a new national New Zealand house price record, going for more than $40 million.
Sources said today that an expat Kiwi had bought the house of David Nathan, who died in November.
On Anzac Day, the property featured on the front of the Herald’s property site OneRoof headlined “an extraordinary private coastal estate”.
The Andersons Cove house was marketed by Bayleys in association with Knight Frank, with Bayleys’ Duncan Ross and Sarah Dyer listed as the agents.
The advertising said the north-facing beachfront residence at 101 Bream Tail Rd, Andersons Cove comprised 10 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms spread across a number of different places.
The house was designed by architect Andrew Patterson.
Components are:
- The main primary residence with four bedrooms;
- The potting shed one-bedroom, self-contained place;
- Clifftops Lodge, a two-bedroom retreat;
- The Boatshed, a three-bedroom place that also houses boats.
Owners David and Pamela Nathan searched for 10 years for such a place, according to their daughter Sarah Nathan.
“They had very specific requirements – Dad wanted riparian rights and absolute beachfront, with privacy as one of his top priorities, as well as wanting to be close to Auckland," she said in the OneRoof-sponsored content published on April 25.
They found out about the property purely by chance and although it was just a humble Lockwood set among scrubby bush back then, it was love at first sight for her father when the family went and had a look, she said.
New Zealand’s most expensive place sold was in 2023, reported to be a 15ha-plus estate in Queenstown for more than $40m by Queenstown agent Hamish Walker, of Walker and Co Realty.
That eclipsed the previous record of $38.5m, which was set in 2013 for the former Hotchin mansion on Huriaro Place, in Auckland’s Ōrākei.
Nathan’s obituary in the Herald last November said he was an “entrepreneur, traveller, sailor and rascal, our irrepressible larger-than-life legend passed away peacefully at his beloved beach house, exactly how he wished”.
Nathan was referred to in one media article as “a rag-trade legend”, establishing Nathan Fashions in the 1960s, one of the first Kiwi entrepreneurs to take clothing manufacturing offshore to China.
The couple grew the brand in New Zealand and Australia, and in his later years, he turned to property development.
The Nathans took a 48ha scrubby farmland block and installed irrigation, planted trees and created manicured gardens and an orchard with rolling pastures.
Comment has been sought on the sale from Duncan Ross.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 26 years, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
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