Section 27, on part of which this house stood, was largely given over to churches: The Free Presbyterians, the Primitive Methodists and the Methodist New Connexion, but on 16 October 1868 the rest of the land was sold at the Crown Land Sales. All the lots were bought by Isaacs and Moss, who resold them over the following year. Lot 1 was bought by W.H. Kelly, a local resident then living in Grey Street.

He built his curious little house in 1870 as a rental investment. It stood on one half of its 66ft x 150ft block. From 1875 his tenant was William Henry Compton, his wife, Elizabeth and, briefly, his daughter, also Elizabeth and her husband, Charles Short, a journalist with the Argus. Mr. Compton died in 1879. About the same time Kelly sold the house to George Horsfall of Hoddle Street, Richmond. Horsfall sold it in 1881 at which time the Argus advertised it as a 'preliminary brick building containing four apartments, also stables and outbuildings.' Later in the ad it is described as a 'useful brick building, stone foundations and slate roof.' Hardly the usual hyperbole one expects of a real estate ad.

Louis Wustemann was the next owner. Wustermann owned a lot of property in the inner city, including ten shops at 130 to 150 Bridge Road, between Lennox Street and Wustemann Place, named after him. He lived behind 150. He rented the house out for many years but c.1909 pulled it down and built a new house of six rooms. This he transferred to his grand-son, Abraham Wilfred Wustemann Howgate, known as Will.

Will called the house Haeremai, Welcome in Maori. Will's father, Joseph Howgate, had died in 1885, aged only 33, leaving his wife, Adelaide with four young children. Will was the youngest, aged 1. Adelaide, died in 1894, aged 39. The children, by then aged 10 to 17, were cared for by their grand-parents.

Wustemann retained the land at the side. The house which had been numbered 35, now became 33, and the land took the number 35. In 1910 Wustemann died and the land became Howgate's. He built a second house of similar style in 1914. He sold both houses about two years later.