Two multi-million dollar do-ups in top Auckland suburbs dominated the city’s auctions this week.
A grand two-storied, seven-bedroom mansion on Mountain Road, Epsom, currently carved into four flats sold for $3.75m at Barfoot & Thompson’s auction.
Agent Jill Jackson, who marketed the double grammar zone house on a roomy 2,050sqm site zoned for single house, said interest was high.
“The fact that it was not a development site pulled the interest and excluded classic developers, it was people interested in the existing house,” she said, adding that the buyer is experienced renovator who intends to restore the property to one home.
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Jackson credited a vendor prepared to meet the market for the property selling under the hammer. It had a CV of $4.3m, and according to OneRoof records exchanged hands in 2012 for $1.69m.
On beachfront Cheltenham, in Devonport, on Auckland’s North Shore, interest was high for a semi-detached 1990s three-bedroom house on Macky Avenue.
Bayleys agent Victoria Bidwell, who marketed the property, said the buyers who came from the city, Remuera and Herne Bay, as well as the local area, were mainly down-sizers looking for a smaller beach-side property to replace the large family home. The eventual buyer, who paid $4.75m - well over the $3.875m CV - was a local.
“I expected [the price] to go to this level because opportunities to buy something small, on the beach, are few and far between,” Bidwell said.
“It’s rare to find something like that, and there’s growth in that price. It’s ripe for a renovation, and you could sell it for a lot more money to an even bigger audience of people who don’t want to do the work.”
Downsizing buyers competing for luxury apartments were also driving up prices.
In Devonport, an immaculate upper floor apartment conversion in the former Masonic Hotel on King Edward Parade sold under the hammer for $4.9m last week, nearly $1.8m above its $3.11m CV.
Bayleys agent Lynda Betts, who marketed the property, said it had garnered a huge amount of interest from both local and international buyers and drew six potential bidders to the auction, with two bidders fighting it out for the last $500,000.
“It’s such a unique property, but we’re seeing that happening in Devonport because there’s not enough stock,” Betts said.
And in Remuera, a three-bedroom apartment on the first floor of 308, a luxury apartment complex on 308 Remuera Road, sold for $4.95m at a Bayleys auction this week.
Last month, the penthouse in the same development smashed auction records when it sold for $12.77m. Agent Robert Ashton, who marketed the apartment with Jenny Kek, said it showed, once again, auctions were working.
“The price is very close to where we’d previously priced it, it demonstrates we are still achieving the prices we’ve set,” he said, adding that the December 7 auction of a third-floor apartment in the block is likely to reach the high $5m.
Nine of the 18 apartments in 308 have sold, with two-bedroom apartments still available for $3m.