A modest three-bedroom brick and tile home with do-up potential in West Auckland sold for $1.820 million at auction – almost double property's CV.
Seven bidders competed for the property at 22 Lowtherhurst Road, in Massey, and given its 2152sqm section and favourable zoning, it's likely the new owner will be looking to develop it.
The price is the highest this year for Massey and well above the suburb's median value of $750,000.
Ray White auctioneer Ben East, who called the auction, said: “When the opening bid starts at NZ$70,000 over the property’s CV, you know right away it’s going to be a special auction, and that’s exactly how it turned out.
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“This fantastic result is typical of the incredible competition we’re seeing for properties now, with demand very much outstripping supply."
Ray White auctioneer Ben East, who called the auction, says that bidding started high to make for a special auction. Photo / Supplied
Agent and branch manager John Hubbard, who marketed the property, added: “Properties with such relatively large section sizes nowadays rarely come to the market in suburban Auckland.
“The campaign was carefully targeted at developers and fixer-upper home buyers rather than a generic 'one size fits all' approach that would have risked failing to 'hit the mark' with any specific buyer group,” said Ray White Universal Branch Manager John Hubbard.
22 Lowtherhurst Road, which is close to the North Western Motorway and Westgate mall, is zoned Mixed Housing Suburban under the Auckland Plan, which would allow a developer to put up to three two-storey attached or detached town houses (or more, with consents).
Massey and nearby Westgate have been identified as areas that are ripe for transformation and intensification, with several large-scale residential and commercial developments in the pipeline.
The development market across Auckland appears to be taking off again, with several properties zoned for townhouse and apartments selling for premium prices. A run-down bungalow on an 804sqm section in Royal Oak sold for $2.71 million last week and a four-bedroom 1950s house at 185 Meadow bank Road, in Oradea, sold for $4.05 million.
