A simple brick and tile house in a good street in Dannemora, South Auckland, stormed home in an auction last week that bubbled with emotion, says Ray White agent Monika Maynard.
First-home buyers fought it out as an astonishing 128 bids were made for the low maintenance four-bedroom house at Ballyward Close, which needed a spruce up inside.
The house had only been on the market eight days when a pre-auction offer of $1.358 million brought the auction forward with the house selling under the hammer for $1.532m.
Ray White head auctioneer Sam Steele called the auction and says to get into triple bidding figures is phenomenal for the type of property.
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“I would say the average that we see for an auction might be 30, something like that, so to have over 100 is certainly a very, very active auction.”
Steele has called auctions which have had more bids, sometimes over 200, but says these are usually for properties that are unique in some way, such as a site ripe for development or one that’s on the market for the first time in 60 years.
What was unusual about this one was its ordinariness: “Anyone who knows Botany or East Tamaki, well, there are certainly a lot of properties of that style.
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“It's a very standard house for that area, there's certainly lots of comparables and it's not something that's ultra unique.”
There were five active bidders and around 50 people had viewed the house on the one weekend of open home.
Steele puts the result down to low stock numbers in the area and says the sale also reflects a market on the move.
“We’ve definitely seen the number of bidders increase over the past probably eight weeks. It’s positive to see that uplift in the market and as the summer months roll on hopefully it will continue moving forward.”
Maynard says the buyer who made the pre-auction offer was disappointed on auction day as they were outbid.
She says bids went up in increments of $1000, $2000 and $5000 with the last $100,000 worth of bids coming down to two first-home buyers.
“People really wanted this property. I spoke to the underbidder who I was sitting with and he said no, they're going to leave it because the other person just kept on going and they had gone way over their budget anyway.
“What he really liked about the property was it was single level brick, it was in a very quiet, secluded street where not many properties sold, it was elevated and it had a bit of a view.”
The four-bedroom house attracted 50 people over its one and only weekend of open home. Photo / Supplied
Maynard describes the property, built in 2001, as a tidy do-up still with an original kitchen and bathroom.
“It had original yellow wallpaper and the original green formica benchtop in the kitchen.”
The sale price was a strong one as agents had been hoping the property might fetch the CV of $1.45m but it exceeded that by nearly $100,000, which she says is rare in the current market.
“It was just one of those dynamic moments I guess where you had emotional buyers and they could see that other people wanted it so it was an emotionally-charged atmosphere because the two buyers were just looking at each other all the time and we just got an emotional price for it.”
The sale shows the power of auction, she says: “There’s no way we would have got that price if we had not gone to auction”.
Maynard also says interest was high because it’s a good area with good school zones but there is not a lot for sale.
“A few neighbours came to the open homes as well and I think they were saying this is the second house on the street that has sold in 21 years.”
The house was also a good choice for first-home buyers putting down roots.
“It’s a four-bedroom home so it’s not like they have to move to try and get into a bigger house.
“It’s a house they can grow into and just do it up as they want to. They can grow with it, they can have a family there, know that their children can go to a good school and it’s just so close to everything, it’s really, really convenient.”
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