Real estate agents have warned of fast-moving house prices in Auckland as a modern home in the city's prized double grammar zone sold for $6.045m under the hammer - more than $2m above CV.
The glass-walled four-bedroom house on Landscape Road, in Mount Eden, broke Barfoot and Thompson's lockdown record after strong bidding at the agency's auction last week.
Diana West, who marketed the 1100sqm property with Peter West, told OneRoof only buyers with budgets of at least $5m were at the auction. “We had a huge number of enquiries,” she said.
She added: “We’ve had nothing like that since Covid last year, we’ve had a huge shortage of listings.
Start your property search
“I’ve got 14 vendors who are ready to sell with properties worth from $2m up to $5m, but they won’t list until they find what they’re looking for. Nobody wants to be out of the market when prices are moving so fast.”
The Landscape Road sale eclipses the agency's previous lockdown auction record – $5.56m for a pair of houses on Orakei Road, in Remuera.
The property wasn't the only top ticket item on the auction block, with a three-bedroom house in Parnell selling for $4.511m, blowing past its pre-auction offer of $3.8m.
The listing agent, Jill Jackson, told OneRoof: “There’s next to nothing in Parnell at the moment. This is a very good street and a standalone house. You could buy an apartment for $1m or a do up for $2m, but I could sell more of these houses if I had them.”
Last month a pair of houses on Orakei Road, in Remuera, sold for $5.56m. Photo / Supplied
Barfoot and Thompson managing director Peter Thompson told OneRoof that while a lot of would-be vendors were still waiting for Auckland to move out of lockdown before going to market, listing volumes, particularly in the higher price brackets, were ticking up
“New listings [for October] were only 5% down on October last year, and more than double those for September," he said.
“We’ve had a large number of $3m to $6m properties come to market and selling. That’s normal for the spring/summer season, and that’s why the average sale price has gone up.”
Barfoot and Thompson’s average sale price for October of $1.188m was up 5% on September and 13.8% on October last year.
Since lockdown began the company has sold 910 properties under the hammer - a success rate of 78.2% - with 5423 registered bidders placing 21,179 bids.
And auction bookings in the past four weeks were up 39% on October last year.
Thompson expects sales activity will increase once Auckland moves out of lockdown. Asked if he agreed with the Reserve Bank's warning this week that house prices were becoming unsustainable, he said rising builing costs were putting pressure on the market.
“The lack of building material, the lack of trained builders and apprentices, the lack of land - it all adds up, and these costs are passed on to consumers.
“That means [prices] for existing properties rise to match.
“I don’t think [prices will] come down in the short to medium term.”
