A luxury bach in New Zealand's wealthiest beach town sold sight unseen last week for an "auction-stopping" $4.1 million.
The five-year-old five-bedroom house on Mangatawhiri Road, in Omaha, had been slated to go to auction once Auckland came out of level three restrictions but the buyers didn't want to wait that long.
The house, which was marketed by Ray White agents Heather Walton and Rod Cheeseman, fetched more than $1.4m above its CV - and $600,000 above what the vendors paid for it in January this year.
That stunning flip has allowed them to trade up to elsewhere in the town.
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"It’s all part of the Omaha shuffle," Walton told OneRoof.
“The buyers didn’t need to view it. They’d actually known a previous owner and they knew the person who built it, so it was all very easy. They knew they had the advantage.”
Walton said the buyers knew how quickly properties were selling in Omaha, having missed out on others, so they decided to move quickly - much to the chagrin of other buyers who were waiting to view the house once Auckland moved to level two.
The Mangatawhiri Road property was listed during lockdown. It boasts a design by Brent Hulena and is just metres from the golf course.
Another property Walton listed at the weekend, a country spread on Hamilton Road, in Snells Beach, sold within a day for over $3m to a buyer who had missed out on three other properties.
“We’re struggling to keep up the demand for listings. People are sick of locking down in Auckland. Omaha is a much nicer place to be.”
Di Balich, of Precision Real Estate, also sealed a $4.1m Omaha sale during lockdown. She sold a brand new four-bedroom house on Omaha Drive that had been built as a spec sale by local master builders Henri and Craig Berkel.
She also sold a more modest eight-year-old architect-designed house on Tuna Place for $2.5m, more than twice its $1.2m ratings valuation.
A brand new house on Omaha Drive also sold for $4.1m over lockdown. Photo / Supplied
“We had three buyers off our data base, and it sold in two days during lockdown. Good quality places are just selling, we didn’t even get round to photographing it.”
According to OneRoof's examination of settled sales in Omaha in the last 12 months, four more properties have fetched more than $4m, and it is likely more high sales will be settling soon, some of which will break records.
The highest price paid for an Omaha bach is $7.375m. Walton scored the record for a five-bedroom designed by the award-winning Leuschke Group Architects in 2009 on the waterfront on Inanga Lane in April.
The Omaha beachfront property on Inanga Lane sold for a record $7.375m in April. Photo / Supplied
New high end Omaha listings are slim: Walton has a five bedroom, 256 sqm property back from the beach at 31 Inanga Lane which OneRoof records show has ratings valuation of $2.35m and a search price of over $3m while Bayleys’ Victoria Turner has a four-bedroom waterfront house on Omaha Drive overlooking Whangateau Harbour which goes to auction October 20. It has a ratings valuation of $2.775m.
A OneRoof investigation published in July found that a mere 40 families own 10% of the properties in the beach town of Omaha. Collectively these properties are worth more than $170m, with one family’s holding valued in 2017 at more than $25m.
