Ed Hillary’s House For Sale

Sir Ed Hillary’s long-time home in Auckland is for sale by auction within a few weeks. New Zealand’s most famous son bought the Remuera house 1956 until his death last year.

The modest 2-story weatherboard and iron roof house is valued at a modest $1.96 million, most of which will be the land value of the 1738sq m Remuera Rd section which has expansive  views to Rangitoto. Neighbourings homes in the street are valued up to $12 million.  The predictable call has gone up by the local busy bodies Remuera Heritage group for someone – presumably the local council or central government, to buy the house and turn it into a museum. The concern is that otherwise someone will buy it, pull it down and redevelop the site.

I am no expert on Ed Hillary – but  I do rather suspect that he wouldn’t have been very impressed by Remuera Heritage. Edmund Hillary might well be remembered in the west as the first man to climb Mt Everest – but Hillary himself considered his life work to be the work that he did with the sherpas building schools and bringing medical help to the remote Nepalese valleys which he loved so much.  He was fundamentally a practical man – although the family is not releasing details, I’d hazzard a guess that his will left the proceeds of his estate to the same charities he supported during his life.

Remuera is these days about as blue-ribbon, well-located Auckland property as you can get. If you can raise the capital (or have a few spare US$) then you could hardly do any wrong buying this property and sitting on it for a few years, particularly if the New Zealand property market is close to bottom, and the person who pays top dollar for Ed’s property will truely contribute to his vision of his legacy – not a stuffy old museum.