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Heathcote Manor, an Invercargill home where Queen Elizabeth II is said to have visited has been bought.
The home was the first to be built on Invercargill’s Wellesley Ave in the 1930s by Alan and Marge Macalister and was originally known as Whiteoaks.
It has been on the market for about a year and sold for $920,000.
One Agency property specialist Sean Bellew said he was very glad to sell the house again.
"The house had a broken heart.
"It just really needs people to revitalise and warm it up and put some soul back into it."
In the early 1950s the Hazlett family, who were known for breeding race horses, bought the house.
"The Queen visited them in 1954 when she was in Invercargill."
Mr Bellew first sold the house in 2023 for $950,000 but the new owners had changed their plans and it had been empty for about 18 months.
"It was a hard negotiation because the vendor obviously didn’t want to lose money."
He had been selling houses in the area for 36 years and it was rare for him to sell a house for less than the owner had paid for it, he said.
"I’ve had probably less than 2% of my clients lost money, so it was pretty hard yardage to go through."
He was pleased the couple who had bought the house had plans to restore it and live there.
"I’m all about the people and matching . . . the right home for the right people.
"I just felt they were the right people."
Even though the brick, roughcast house had been built in the 1930s, it had a 19th century English feel to it.
"You could see a wee bit of English history wafting through the house."
A staircase and a stained glass window depicting the War of the Roses set above it, were both imported from England, he said.
It also had shutters on the windows which could be made into a feature, he said.
"It’s like putting eyelashes on a lady."
The inside of the house was in very good shape but the outside would need repairs.
The new owners would take possession in August.