The Block NZ auctions might be on hold for now but inquiries have still been strong for the four Pt Chevalier homes despite Auckland’s Level 4 lockdown.
Ray White Kingsland’s Tim Hawes, who is marketing Meg and Dan’s house, says he’s had calls and inquiries from people overseas returning later in the year and from those travelling for business.
That’s not out of step with what would happen during normal campaigns but this time Level 4 restrictions mean agents can’t get through the houses to offer international buyers virtual tours via Skype, Zoom or Google Chat.
“Of course, these properties have more than enough video content available for viewing on demand and we would recommend that interested buyers go back and watch the shows to see all the details of the homes.”
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People understand the situation, Hawes says. “[They] are just looking to find out as much as they can prior to coming along to view the homes when we get to the appropriate restriction levels.
“In general, this level of prior due diligence is the smart thing to do in the Auckland market as you don’t want to be held up by paperwork if you can avoid it.”
While there is no new auction date as yet a Discovery NZ spokesperson confirmed the intention is to continue with the plans for a live auction as soon as alert levels allow.
While the spokesperson wouldn’t comment on what would happen if a particularly strong offer was made on one of the houses ahead of the auction, other agents spoken to by OneRoof say strong offers can sometimes get a house taken off the market and the auction cancelled.
There has been a steady increase in pre-auction offers over the last quarter. Photo / Fiona Goodall
In fact, that’s a strategy mortgage brokers are advising clients to ask for in order to beat the stiff competition for properties, says Harcourts agent Nicky Malloy, who sells in west Auckland.
“I’m hearing it from buyers quite regularly that their mortgage brokers are the ones telling them to do it, because of course they’re wanting to secure the property for their client,” she says.
“It’s a good strategy for the buyer, of course. It’s going to cut out their competition, and for the vendor, as long as it’s a good enough price, it might work for them.
“But there’s always a risk of losing out on more because so many of the properties we bring the auctions forward on get additional bidding, and quite often quite a lot of additional bidding, so it would have to be an extraordinary number, or an extraordinary circumstance.”
Malloy has not come across any extraordinary offers so far this lockdown, however.
Ray White Remuera agent Steve Koerber says it’s rare for a vendor to change course even after a strong pre-auction offer but it does happen.
Different real estate companies have slightly different policies but “if you’ve got a property worth $2m and somebody came and offered $4m, well, of course, we’d all be a bit silly to prevent that from happening”.
“It’s up to the individual real estate company as to how they would deal with that,” he says.
In Ray White’s case, the offer would first have to be assessed as “amazing” and there are strict processes in place.
“Internally, we have two layers of management that call the owners and make sure they’re doing the right thing and they call any of the buyers who’ve shown interest,” he says.
“Generally speaking, we always recommend to our vendors they bring an auction forward because bringing an auction forward tends to bring more people out of the woodwork.”
Koerber couldn’t think of any recent examples but says with such low listing numbers the current environment could be conducive to very large offers being made, especially given the increasing phenomenon of people buying homes sight unseen. “I look at Melbourne and Sydney and they have a lot of sight unseen sales and such sales are growing here.
“If someone’s willing to buy sight unseen I guess they’re the type of personality that’s going to also make a particularly high offer.”
