A small one-bedroom cottage in a former working class Auckland suburb has sold for $1.211 million under the hammer.
The home, which sits on just 250sqm of freehold land on Yates Street in Onehunga, had proved popular with young professionals and down-sizers, selling for almost half a million dollars above its 2017 CV.
READ MORE: Find out if your suburb is rising or falling
Marketed by Barfoot & Thompson agents Digna Clark and Liz Byers, the property had five active bidders competing to secure it at the auction last week.
Start your property search
Byers told OneRoof that properties of that size in the suburb were typically cross-lease and attached to other properties, so the fact it was a single title made it more appealing.
She said those who had come to the open homes had fallen in love with it. “Demand drove the price higher than what we and the vendor had hoped for,” she said.
The 54sqm Onehunga home is sitting on a 250sq m freehold section. Photo / Supplied
“The fact that it was seen as entry level, was not attached to anything else and was located on a cute little quiet street ticked boxes for many,” Byers said.
Barfoot and Thompson Onehunga branch manager Bruce Holmes described the sale result as “pretty solid” but was not surprised by the price the house achieved.
He said that it was hard to find free-standing houses in the suburb for less than $1.2m, with even two-bedroom units selling for $700,000.
At another auction held last week, a bigger house in nearby Church Street sold under the hammer for $1.4m - almost $500,000 above its rating valuation.
The Ray White auction for the three-bedroom home was brought forward after the vendors accepted a pre-auction offer of $1.302m in the second week of the campaign.
A three-bedroom house on Church Street sold under the hammer for $1.4million. Photo / Supplied
The listing agent, Stuart Robertson, said there were five buyers making bids on the property, which eventually sold to a professional couple.
“Interestingly, the buyer who put in the pre-auction offer had the money for it but did not see the value the other buyer was seeing,” he said.
Robertson said the $1.4m sale was above entry level but added that $1.1m was considered entry level in Onehunga.
“The vendors have been there for 17 years and they’ve seen a dramatic change in property values and they were absolutely astounded by the result as they put their faith in the auction system,” he said.
The house, with a recently renovated kitchen and bathroom, sitting on a 721sqm freehold section zoned for mixed housing suburban next to a railway crossing, has a rating valuation of $910,000 with improvement value of $230,000.
