Resort-style home with income looking for holiday-loving owner

You know the feeling, when you go somewhere gorgeous on holiday and wish you could move there forever? 

Sally Kerse and her family know the feeling well. So well in fact they decided to bring the holiday vibe home to their verdant little lifestyle block in Matakana, complete with pond, bath house, lake house and dinghy. 

“My husband and I just love water and it’s just the most beautiful pond. In the summer it’s absolutely filled with the white lotus flowers. 

“With the gazebo, we’ve got the hammock hanging from it and outdoor furniture. It’s just gorgeous.”

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Kerse and her husband Rick also added a Balinese gazebo so they’d have somewhere to hang their hammock. With hand carved lotus flower posts, Balinese doors on the patio and “literally hundreds” of palm trees, the property has the lush, tropical feel of a resort.

The family moved in about five years ago thinking it would be a quick do-up job, “but renovations never are”.

It ended up taking about 12 months. During that time Sally, Rick, their daughter, three dogs and a cat were able to stay on the property living in a double garage and commercial kitchen on the grounds.  

Inside is finished to a high standard, with large open plan living spaces, crisp white walls and honey colours timber floors through out.  

“The house was probably about 50 years old and the style was not my style. Now, it’s totally different to how it was when we moved in. We’ve replaced all the joinery and put in huge big sliders so that it does open right up to the water.” 

It was the water that drew them to the property and it’s everywhere, from the pond, to the pool, to the outdoor bath house with two claw foot tubs. All the Kerses’ homes have had water aspects, even if it meant having to dig a “huge big pondy lakey thing” themselves. 

“We’re really water people, it’s just so gorgeous with the flowers coming out.” 

It’s a reluctant sale for the family, but their daughter is in a wheelchair and they want to move closer to community, where it’ll be easy for her to get out and about.

Set on two and half acres, the home has six bedrooms, six bathrooms – three ensuite. There’s also the cottage Kerse runs as an Air B’n’B, “which is just doing amazingly well”, and the commercial kitchen, where the previous owners made organic peanut butter and skin care products they sold at the local market. 

A gaggle of ducks, a swimming pool, orchard and olive grove only add to the property’s allure. 

“I just want whoever buys it to love, love, love it as much as we do,” says Kerse.

“It is the most beautiful place, in the summer you honestly feel that you’re on holiday. That’s what we tried to do, we wanted it to feel a little bit like a resort. It’s very easy to live in. I’m very sad we have to leave.”

The home is on the market with an asking price of $2,895,000.