Kawakawa's station and Stumpy's up for sale

The Kawakawa Caltex station is close to Northland's famous Hundertwasser toilet block.

A high profile Caltex service station located on State Highway 1 in Northland is for sale with more than 11 years remaining on its current lease term. The property is on the corner of Station Rd and SH1, Kawakawa, the "gateway to the Bay of Islands".

It is now producing net annual rental income of $208,343.56 plus GST.

For sale through a tender process closing on August 9 - unless sold earlier by negotiation - the property is being sold by Alan Haydock and Damien Bullick of Bayleys Auckland in conjunction with Tonya Spicer, Bayleys Northland. The property features in Bayleys' latest Total Property portfolio.

"This is an opportunity to acquire a genuine hassle-free, bottom-drawer investment property with an established tenant on a long-term lease. It has built in rental growth, and a corner site location on the main highway north," says Haydock.

Caltex has occupied the 2957sq m site since October 2004 on a 23-year lease term that runs until 2027, with two further rights of renewal of 10 years each. The lease has fixed annual rental increases of either the higher of the increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or 2 per cent. With the CPI currently running at well below 2 per cent per annum, this means the rental will increase by $4,166.87 in October.

The property operates primarily as a Caltex Service Station, with further services to attract customers and passing vehicles.

The main, single-level 242sq m commercial building, constructed in the 1980s, contains the service station's Fix retail premises, staff room, office and amenities.

It incorporates a separate takeaway restaurant and fish shop, trading as Stumpy's, which offers fresh seafood, smoked fish, fish and chips and other light meals

The building consists of a combination of steel framing and reinforced concrete masonry and as such benefits from an Initial Evaluation Procedure (IEP) seismic assessment of 100 per cent of New Building Standard (NBS), says Bullick.

The building's substantial main forecourt has four fuel pumps, each located under a large canopy. At the rear of the site is a carwash, a truck refuelling facility and an LPF refill station, which, along with the takeaway and fresh fish shop, operate under a sub-lease agreement.

Bullick says the service station is on one of Kawakawa's most high-profile sites, at the end of the main street where SH1 swings right and heads north towards Kerikeri (via a link with SH10), Kaitaia and Ninety Mile Beach.

"It's Kawakawa's only petrol station and is a major refuelling point for cars and trucks heading north, as well as servicing the town's residents and surrounding rural communities," says Bullick.

"Stumpy's also rates highly on Trip Advisor and is a popular stopping off point for hungry motorists as well as buses."

Kawakawa is about 45 minutes' drive north of Whangarei and about 20 minutes south of Paihia and the Bay of Islands, via State Highway 11.

It is probably most famous for the Hundertwasser toilet block, designed by Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who was a resident of the town from 1975 until his death in 2000.

Northland has been one of New Zealand's strongest-performing regions over the past year according to ANZ Economic's latest quarterly regional trends report, with an average increase in economic activity of 4.3 per cent for the 12 months to March 2016, well ahead of Auckland which had an increase of 3.7 per cent.

A buoyant tourism sector has been a major driver of this.