A modest Auckland house that shot to fame in an out-there marketing video has sold under the hammer for $1.66 million - $535,000 above its 2017 CV.
Ray White agent Linh Yee kicked up a viral storm with her Bruno Mars-inspired video advertising 9 Morrie Laing Avenue in Mt Roskill.
The two-minute video highlights the development potential of the property and called on buyers to “Bid up!” when the property was auctioned on May 5.
But the buyer and the under bidder - both developers - were completely unaware of the property's star quality.
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“There was a lot of talking about the video in the room but the two developers who were fighting for it had not seen the video,” Yee said.
The three-bedroom 1950s home sits on 895sqm of land zoned mixed housing suburban. Yee said the buyer plans to land bank the property for a few years.
It's not known what the buyer would have made of Yee's distinctive video.
In it, Yee and her crew arrive at the property in a distinctive yellow Land Rover wearing white suits and gold shutter shades, and start singing their own real estate version of Mars’ hit 24K Magic.
9 Morrie Laing Avenue, in Mt Roskill, Auckland, is zoned for density. Photo / Supplied
“It’s time to move,” Yee sings with gusto. “Developers, watcha you trying to do? This house is gonna be sold. Look out!”
As she struts through the house, Yee lays down the property’s fundamentals. “Knock, knock, it’s open home time, I’ll guess I’ll see you then.”
She adds: “This is 9 Morrie Laing, it’s one of a kind – bid up!”
Dianne Maxwell, Yee's colleague and a back-up singer in a video, said Yee had wanted to do something different with the marketing campaign.
"It's definitely a bit of a giggle," she said, adding that the song was written by Yee at the end of a very long day.
"She was working really late, it was about 12.30am, and she was listening to Bruno Mars and wrote down some lyrics, as you do. She called her husband, who said, 'Are you out of your mind?'; she replied, 'Watch me do it' and she did it," Maxwell said.
The video had been received positively, with other agents calling up to comment on the "gutsy" marketing campaign.
“We gave it our all and it all worked out," Maxwell said.
Yee, who started her career in the real estate this year, said she wanted to do something outside of the box. "For me, it's about making business fun and I wanted to find my point of difference and keep it real," she told OneRoof.
"A lot of real estate is mechanical. I want to make it more fun and follow my creative side and make something unique for the vendor."
Yee, who loves music, said she is looking for more opportunities to market properties in song. "I have about six songs up my sleeve written on my white board," she said.
Yee’s is not the first agent to go the extra mile for her clients. In 2019, Bayleys agent Jock Kooger filmed himself jumping off a cliff into water near a home he was marketing, and in Sydney an agent became a star overnight after he promoted a home with a raunchy video of two dancers writhing on top of each other.
