Rich and famous in line for $30m island property

A major global marketing campaign targeted at some of the world's richest people is about to be launched in a bid to sell the country's most exclusive waterfront property.

Waiheke Island's sprawling Cowes Bay estate with its spacious eight-bedroom waterfront mansion and caretaker's residence has so far attracted only six responses from Kiwi rich-listers.

The 36ha estate is going for more than twice the $14 million record that Auckland financier Mark Hotchin set in November when he bought a 4ha Boathouse Bay property on Waiheke.

With an asking price of $30 million, Cowes Bay estate appears to be out of the reach of most New Zealanders, so it's now going global with a major overseas marketing push.

Queenstown agent Michael Boulgaris of Sotheby's International is heading a team of realtors travelling to the United States, United Kingdom, Singapore and Hong Kong in a fortnight to pitch the property to possible overseas buyers.

The home will be marketed at overseas real estate expos and through auction house Sotheby's - best known for selling high-priced art, jewellery and antiques.

Sotheby's has an exclusive database of 70,000 clients, which includes up to 80 per cent of the Forbes rich list. They include financial heavyweights such as Microsoft's Bill Gates, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Oracle's Larry Ellison and lifestyle guru Martha Stewart.

The estate will also make it onto the pages of the Forbes magazine, the powerhouse American business and financial publication.

Mr Boulgaris said it was likely the property would end up in foreign hands, especially as Sotheby's had decided to put the property on the front page of its website.

He said while the owners had settled on a $30 million asking price, to most it would not be a practical investment for a weekend retreat.

The land was particularly valuable and while the main residence covered a third of a hectare of beach front, there were several clifftop sites that could be subdivided to build other houses.

Mr Boulgaris was comfortable about the property being sold overseas, pointing to restrictions imposed by the Overseas Investment Office on foreigners buying prime coastal land and exploiting it for profit. He said it was inevitable that exclusive properties like Cowes Bay were now more attractive to overseas buyers because of the international exchange rate and New Zealand's reputation as a "safe haven" after the events of September 11.

Mark Harris, also of Sotheby's, said there was a high success rate with these types of overseas sales pitches, and he was confident the property would sell despite its high price-tag. The estate is owned by Beverley and Sean Donnelly and was bought in the 1990s for a mere $2 million.

The couple, who are originally from Ireland, also have properties in London and Ireland but live in Port Moresby, where they run a business which supplies prefabricated accommodation for gas, oil, gold and copper mining camps.