A lifestyle estate on the rural fringes of south east Auckland sold at auction for $5.2 million – $2.5m above its CV.
The price bumps the record price paid less than a month ago for a neighbouring house on the tightly-held Point View Drive, Dannemora.
Bayleys agent Kevin Barber, who marketed the lifestyle property, said the buyer was a neighbour who had lived a few hundred metres away on Whitford Road. “She’d been talking to the owner for years and years, saying ‘one day I want to buy this house’. She was the first person I showed through,” he said.
But securing her dream home took some effort, as she competed in fierce bidding from four other registered bidders. Over 100 bids in 17 minutes drove the price of the three-bedroom Spanish-style house to $2.5m above its CV, bumping the street record of $4.6m set only three weeks ago for the next door property.
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The final two bidders fought for the last $500,000 in bids of $1000, with the odd cheeky bid thrown in of $10,000, in what auctioneer George Yeoman called one of his standout auctions of the last 12 months. “It will certainly stick in my memory for a long time.”
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The Point View Drive house was on the market for the first time since it was built in 1973. It sat on a huge 8093sqm plot that marked the boundary between suburban Botany and rural Whitford.
Barber had earlier told OneRoof that the $2.7m CV would be passed, but his guess of about $3m was well off – and well below the $4.6m achieved by the more conventional brick and tile house on a similar sized plot next door.
“The valuer kept saying he had no sales evidence for the price based on one [$4.6m] sale. Now he’ll be in an even bigger dilemma,” he said, adding that the families at both properties knew each other well as neighbours for over 50 years.
The Spanish-style house featured courtyards and immaculate gardens. Photo / Supplied
The 1970s house sits on over 8000sqm that mark the boundary between suburban Botany and rural Whitford in south east Auckland. Photo / Supplied
Barber said the 70 buyers he’d shown through the house knew the price would be in the $3m to $4m range, but as few properties on that road had sold in the last 20 years, his vendors knew setting a reserve would be a challenge. While he could not reveal the number, auctioneer Yeoman called the property was on the market as the fast-paced bidding flew past $4.737m.
The Spanish-style house was built by the creative owners in the 1970s, when the area was still farm paddocks. It would have been a 15-minute drive to the nearest shopping at the then-newish 1960s suburb of Pakuranga (known as Vim Valley, after a famous television commercial), as suburban Botany did not begin springing up until the 1990s. Barber recalled that while the developer gave areas like Dannemora and Shamrock Park Irish-themed names, there was a bit of a Spanish theme going on at the same time in neighbouring streets.
“The house had Pedro and Pablo statues in the garden, I remember matador figurines and black velvet paintings. It was very creative, the owner was a graphic designer and worked from the studio.”
The immaculately presented house, complete with arched doors and verandas included a smart kitchen, landscaped gardens surrounded by courtyard walls, a spa-pool and formal and informal living rooms. It adjoins Shamrock Park Reserve and had sweeping views across the city to the Waitakere Ranges.
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