Santa came early to Auckland homeowners who listed their house two days before Christmas and had the deal all done and dusted by Christmas Eve.
Harcourts agent Nikki Duke, who brokered the deal on the three-bedroom brick and tile home on Nile Road, Milford, in Auckland’s North Shore, said that both she and her vendors were surprised by the speed of the sale.
“That time of the year, it’s a little bit hit-and-miss, people have given up for the year,” said Duke.
“We put up the photos and sign and thought we’d have it up there if people were sitting around bored, as there are not a lot of listings around.”
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Instead, Duke had a call from interested buyers an hour after the listing went up. They inspected the property on the Friday before Christmas, and somehow managed to wrangle both a building inspector and lawyer to do the required paperwork on Saturday, which was Christmas Eve.
“We had an unconditional offer by the end of the day.”
Duke said that she had a number of buyers who had missed out on a very similar neighbouring house that had sold immediately after auction in late November. That went for $1.38 million, slightly below its $1.47m CV, but Duke could not reveal what the Christmas Eve price was.
“It’s a good news story. It shows that if owners are willing to meet the market, [to take] what the other properties are getting, it will sell. An unconditional offer means the owners can get on with their lives,” Duke said.
She added that while it took guts to list before the holidays, rather than waiting until the usual after February rush, not doing what everyone else does paid off.
“My buyers had sold their house, they’d missed out earlier, they could go ahead straight away,” she said. The only downside, Duke said, was that through the holidays she had been swamped with calls from other buyers interested in the house, not realising it had sold. She has already letterbox dropped homeowners in the neighbourhood looking for similar homes for her buyers.
“We’re struggling to get something similar, we’ve got buyers who want to buy, we just need more listings. It was just a positive story for sellers because there is such negative views of days on market and so on.
“There are pre-approved buyers out there and if vendors are prepared to meet the market and present well then there are still good outcomes to be had," Duke said.
