Date 7.10.2008

International high-flyers buy Te Horo
lifestyle property… site-unseen

A global movie executive and a top modeling agency fashion consultant based in the UK have splashed out $900,000 to buy a beautiful lifestyle home at Te Horo – site-unseen - after viewing the property on the internet.

The buyers, Dan Jacobson and Josh Rudd, spied the idyllic six hectare lifestyle property complete with organic blueberry farm on the Bayleys real estate website. The pair made contact with Bayleys Kapiti sales consultant Debbie Laing just 10 days before the auction and quickly got the ball rolling.

“Dan and Josh dialed into our Bayleys auction from London at 1am in the morning UK-time to bid on the property,” said Ms Laing. “It was so exciting…. Dan and Josh were on the line from the UK, we had another potential bidder who had dialed in and was ready to bid over the ‘phone, and a third bidder was in the Bayleys Wellington auction room.

“It’s definitely the most exciting sale I’ve ever had with Bayleys, and it goes to show how committed Bayleys is to finding buyers for our clients at a time when the local market is sluggish.

“It’s great to get such a quick result for my client and shows just how effective auctions are for both the vendor and the purchaser. With an auction, there is a fixed marketing period, the vendor is seriously motivated, and this in turn inspires a greater focus from potential purchasers who know there may not be a second chance to put in a counter offer. Once a property has gone under the hammer… that’s it, there’s no more chances for negotiation…. it’s sold,” said Ms Laing.

The Bayleys website had promoted the Te Horo property as: “A spacious home… an entertainer’s dream, with a fabulous country kitchen, open plan living and easy outdoor access to the deck. Truly the perfect place to sit with a glass of champagne and bowl of freshly picked blueberries from your own orchard.

“The property boasts an already established certified organic blueberry orchard which will earn you an income from the land. The hard work of setting up the orchard has been done, and the blueberries are into the early years of production.

“With four bedrooms, an office, three bathrooms, open plan kitchen dining and lounge, plus separate lounge and formal dining room, there’s loads of space and multiple options for room configuration.

“The grounds still have scope for development, with plenty of room for a swimming pool and tennis court. Further development of the orchard, either in more blueberries, or with other fruit trees is possible, and there is also room for some stock.”

Ecstatic home buyer and movie executive Dan Jacobson is now looking forward to relocating his glamorous ‘Hollywood’ lifestyle to New Zealand – where he is excited not only about the prospect of operating an organic blueberry farm, but also working in Wellington’s dynamic film and entertainment industry.
The move to Te Horo will be a similar culture shock for fashion consultant Josh who is used to rubbing shoulders with the world’s top beauties - working for Storm Model Management whose star-studded cover-girl talent includes the likes of Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford, Eva Herzigova and Kylie Bax.

Among the big-name movies houses which Dan works with are such household names as Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Dan’s company, DJ Promotions, co-ordinates huge competitions - run in conjunction with the release of blockbuster movies, with winners jet-setting to exotic locations around the world. On any given day, his company is working with the regional offices of the various movie companies in Europe, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America.

“I’d like to make a bit of a difference in the world - and see that owning and running an organic blueberry farm might be a nice balance to my everyday career in the movie industry,” said Dan from his London office.

“The idea of moving to New Zealand was two-fold. The first came in the form of working with Peter Jackson’s company, WETA, in which DJ Promotions was hired to globally promote the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and then more recently The Chronicles of Narnia. Also, the movie industry is growing in New Zealand.
“It would seem that New Zealand is becoming just as fashionable a place to be as Hollywood or London. My hope in living in New Zealand will be to work directly with the New Zealand branches of Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and Warner Bros here in the same way we are working with them on a global basis.”

Josh Rudd is originally from Otaki. His family is well known in the area for their socially committed work in the health and education sectors, as well as being actively involved in the local Maori community. Dan and Josh have been to the Kapiti Coast four times in the past three years – although they never visited the blueberry farm purchased last week.

“We’ve been to Otaki and Te Horo so many times, and on each occasion we thought out loud to ourselves ‘we love this place’ and then we started to search for a property in earnest,” said Dan.

The duo plan to resettle at the Te Horo lifestyle property in November next year. In the meantime, Debbie Laing of Bayleys is busy sourcing management of the upcoming blueberry crop harvest for her international client.

ENDS