The house on the hill
In a rural part of Auckland’s northwest, on an exposed and windy hill, stands a two-storey Tudor-style house.
From far away, it could easily be mistaken for a beautiful and stately family home, but as you get closer, the pigeons on the roof, curtains billowing through the open windows and the eerie silence tell a different story.
Some locals of the small rural community, which the owner has begged to stay unnamed for fear of more vandals seeking it out, believe the house and the land it sits on is tapu.
There are whispers of family murders, ghosts and a bereft widow tied to the house, and while the stories have been exaggerated and changed, the history of the house is somewhat fraught.
According to QV, in 2021, the 260-square-metre house with two hectares of land was worth about $1.75 million. A couple who live in the area bought the house already in a dilapidated state in 2011.
One of the current owners said the house had been moved to the site from the more central suburb of rākei in the early 1980s.
She said it was rebuilt on the site and the family who owned it added a second storey.
‘‘The problem was they didn’t have consent from the council to do the work,’’ the owner said.
‘‘Then the man died in a car accident, so his wife decided to on-sell the house.’’
In the early 1990s, the land around and including the house was subdivided into sections for sale, she said, costing what was considered relatively expensive at the time – half a million each.
The sections weren’t selling, the owner said, until a man named Chengqi (Chris) Wang approached developers and told them he could sell the sections to Chinese buyers.
Ō‘‘This fellow held a massive party on one of the sections for a number of prospective buyers who all bought the sections, while he and his wife at the time kept the house on the hill.’’
The couple also owned a macadamia farm in the area and a mansion in Auckland’s Mt Albert. ‘‘I believe he got a cut on what he sold from the developers, but he . . . overvalued the land and sold it for more than what he gave the developers,’’ the owner said.
As the 1990s continued, property values dropped, and the buyers defaulted, leaving the sections to be sold by ANZ as mortgagee sales.
‘‘As far as I know, some men involved with buying the developments decided to deal with the man and went to his mansion in Mt Albert for payback.’’
Wang later stabbed the two men to death, and was jailed for four years for the manslaughter of one of them, after a judge found he was provoked and acting in self-defence. He was also charged by the Serious Fraud Office with fraud and money laundering.
The SFO said Wang would use false documentation to obtain 100% or greater mortgage funding from lenders through the use of what was termed ‘‘price hydraulicking’’.
The SFO said Wang processed mortgage money through various entities’ bank accounts, normally home-stay students living with him at the time. He then paid the relevant costs before retaining the net balance of the proceeds.
In total, Wang obtained $2.3m in mortgage funding, the SFO said.
Following the deaths in Mt Albert, the mansion and the house on the hill went up for mortgagee sale, which is when the current owners made their purchase in 2011.
The current owner of the house on the hill said the whole area was considered tapu by local iwi and had a ‘‘stigma’’ surrounding it.
‘‘When we first purchased the house there was a family living in it, and they told us Wang had been letting it to them if they did work around the house. It was in a bit of a state.’’
But she said she had always
admired the house on the hill, when she saw it from her home, and she’d been keen to do it up.
‘‘We cleared up some of what was in there. It was pretty bad. To be fair, it still is, but we haven’t got round to finishing it, and it’s not up to code. The idea was we’d do the house up and buy an apartment closer to the city for work, and then spend our weekends and time off there.’’
The house had been empty for so long because it would ‘‘cost a fortune’’ to fix, she said, and it didn’t have relevant consent. She said the council had told her the roof would likely not be sustainable in strong winds, which the exposed house often had.
Over the years there had been issues with kids damaging the property, or people wandering onto other neighbours’ land, wanting to take a look inside.
Homeowners on neighbouring properties described the house on the hill as an ‘‘eyesore’’ that attracted hundreds of pigeons to the area. ‘‘It looks like rubbish,’’ one said. ‘‘It’s ugly and ruins the beautiful views.’’
One neighbour said they were hoping one day soon, the house would be demolished or collapse on its own, but for now, the house on the hill lives on. This reporting is public interest journalism funded by NZ on Air.