FEATURES:
Two-storey character bungalow with
heritage features. Formal living, dining, kitchen/
family room, rear covered deck. Basement
garage, two bedrooms suitable as business
quarters. Professionally landscaped grounds,
lighting, irrigation and 9500-litre water tank.
With a beautiful renovated bungalow in Mt Roskill to their credit, Matt and Diana Comber went hunting for a bigger helping of charm, character and potential for their young family - and they found it here in spades.
"I couldn't believe it when I saw it. I fell in love with it - the garden, the house and the location," Diana says of the property they bought nearly 14 years ago.
Their first house was a much smaller bungalow on a half-site. "This home is similar in many ways but it's so much bigger and it has given us stability and lifestyle, and the ability to do more for our children than we'd have been able to afford otherwise."
For Matt and Diana, and their children Sam and Emily, it has been this property's leasehold status that has made a positive difference to their lives. This contrasts wth news reports of other lessees struggling to meet new ground rent fees as they've come due for renewal with the Cornwall Park Trust Board.
"Ours is a good news story," Matt explains. "Every Sunday we'd walk to the park and take the kids up on their bikes. We have no problem with our ground lease going to maintain Cornwall Park at all because it's one of Auckland's unsung assets that so many people don't know about.
"We've had the benefits of living near beautiful park-like grounds and a lifestyle in a home we could not have ordinarily afforded."
The day they swung into the wide driveway and parked at the bottom of the curved rock-lined steps up to the big front porch, the couple had a home that had been fully renovated in 1987, but with so many important bungalow features intact. They soon discovered so much more, including the timber cavity sliding doors with original handles. "We just didn't realise that was all there," says Diana.
There is heart matai flooring and rimu joinery, tongue-and-groove lining inside every bedroom's built-in wardrobes and plaster ceilings, as expected, in a home built in 1923.
"It's solid, it's dry, it has eaves and it has character," says Matt.
Happy with the inside, they threw their energy into the outdoors, building a hardwood deck and pergola off the family room and kitchen. Matt put his landscape design/construction and horticultural science degree expertise to full use.
"We just went for the structure of the garden," he says referring to the mature trees, the colourful, sculptural underplantings and the garden lighting and irrigation.
"It's very child-friendly. The gates by the deck close and you can close the front off." The back lawn has seen barbecues beneath the multicoloured party lights, cricket, croquet, badminton, rugby and trampoline play.
He says 17 years remain on the lease at the current rate of $30,000 a year. "If a young family moves in they've got a whole lifetime of living with their children here before the renewal period is up and they've got the automatic right of renewal.
"We're certainly not distressed sellers. The only thing we're distressed about is that we absolutely love the area and have to leave it.
"It has been totally affordable and given us a fabulous lifestyle."
