A three-bedroom fixer-upper in South Auckland that was marketed for sale with just a $1 reserve has fetched $600,000 under the hammer.
The owners of 14 Landette Road, in Manurewa, bet their retirement plans on the risky sales move - and it worked. The sale price was $70,000 above the 2017 CV.
There were 39 registered bidders for the property, and more than 200 people attended the auction last night.
Agent Pat Lapalapa estimates that last minute arrivals pushed the bidding numbers to over 40. With the starting price of $1, bidding was so fast, he admits he lost track of who was bidding what.
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"It was over in a couple of minutes, it got down to four bidders in the end," he says, adding that the successful bidder was a new client who bought the house under a company name.
OneRoof data shows 14 Landette Road last sold in 2002 for $140,500 - handing the owners a profit of $459,500 on paper.
Two other properties Lapalapa was auctioning on the night benefited from the Landette Road under-bidders turning their attention to those: a property at 1 Iris Place, Clendon Park got $605,000, while 155A Russell Rd, Manurewa achieved $671,000.
Lapalapa hopes other vendors will pick up on the idea. "We got 100 groups through, while other properties in better condition only got around 25 groups," he says.
"It removes vendor price expectations barrier. Some people don't even turn up to the auction, yet they could have been successful and bid something the vendor would have accepted."
Ray White Manurewa office manager Tom Rawson told OneRoof shortly after the house was listed that it had generated a lot of interest. "We had three offers in the first 24 hours. We’ve had an offer of $3 on Instagram, had people saying ‘I will give you a dollar for it now’, we had offers in the $400s and $500s. It gets people excited,” he said.
According to real estate agents in South Auckland, fierce investor activity is driving the real estate market there, with do-up homes selling quickly.
Adam Thomson, director of Ray White Manukau, recently told OneRoof: “There seems to be so many people either wanting to invest or get into property. We can’t really keep up with listings. If anyone’s looking at selling it hasn’t been a better time for us in the last years.”
While activity is across the price range, there’s a lot of interest in the $600,000 to $700,000 market, and do-ups are proving popular with speculators who upgrade and rent them out.
“It’s really spread out evenly across the market which we don’t always see. In the past when we’ve had market change we’ve had quite a lot of activity in a certain part but at the moment we’re seeing it spread.”
