A real estate agent who recently sold nine houses in nine days believes the market is starting to turn a corner.
The value of the deals brokered by Harcourts agent Aman Gulia totalled just over $10 million, with new-builds and development sites among the Auckland properties snapped up by buyers between April 30 and May 8.
Gulia said the sales – in Mount Wellington, Massey, Avondale, Henderson and Titirangi – were a sign that buyers were hungry and the housing market slump was coming to an end.
“It’s been pretty amazing getting 30 to 40 enquiries a week for a property, whereas in February you’d be lucky to get 10 a week. It will be hard for you to believe if I said I'm running short of development sites,” he told OneRoof.
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He believed that buyers were sensing that the market was close to the bottom of its current cycle. “We don't think it's the bottom yet, but better to buy when you know it's close rather than when you have missed the boat,” he said.
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He added: “Everyone is coming out of the woodwork to buy now. It’s logical to buy now. In nine to 12 months, the market will have gone up."
Gulia was unable to disclose the sale prices of all nine properties, but he did reveal that some of his vendors sold for less than what they originally paid.
The owners of a pair of homes on Highland Avenue, Titirangi, on a total of 2161sqm zoned for suburban density, was prepared to take a loss from their purchase 20 months ago in order to move on.
A development site on Highland Avenue, in Titirangi, sold at a loss. Photo / Supplied
The vendors had paid $3.905m for the five-bedroom home and two-bedroom unit at the peak of the market, in June 2021, intending to develop site, but “pulled the pin” when the market downturn started to bite.
“They cut their losses and decided to focus on [another] development.”
Gulia was unable to reveal what the vendors sold for, except to say the buyer got an “amazing deal” on the properties and intends to go ahead with the development.
The agent said developers appeared heartened by an uptick in interest in finished developments, highlighting the 140 enquiries he had received in the space of three weeks for four three-bedroom terrace houses on Roberton Road, in Avondale.
That interest led to two unconditional sales at $1.025m and $1.040m, with a third home under contract – a result Gulia calls “insane”.
A house on a large site on Hillside Road, in Mount Wellington, sold for $1.3m. Photo / Supplied
Two houses at 18 Roberton Road, in Avondale, sold for more than $1m each. Photo / Supplied
Gulia also revealed he had sold a new three-bedroom terrace house on Tango Place, in Henderson, for $850,000.
He is now marketing a nine-townhouse development of two- and three-bedroom homes in New Lynn, with two sold in the first two weeks, and 10 townhouses at The Hudson, on Beach Road, in Hobsonville.
"We have never seen that many people coming through open homes. This just shows that a good product with good price can get people in,” he said, adding that developers are keen to get the cash and move on to their next project, even if they could get another $20,000 if they waited a few more months.
“In 2021, every developer was making 30% margin. Now that could drop to 18 to 20%, but some figure they’d rather get 10% and move on because the price has dropped for land [for their next development].
“They’ve got the cash, because in 2021 they didn’t over-reach themselves buying too many sites. These buyers have been doing this for 20 years – they’re not the mum and dad amateurs.”
He added that he was fielding calls daily from developers looking for flat sites, and had received a fair amount of interest in a 1149sqm site with suburban density zoning at 4 Larnark Street, Milford, which is on the market for the first time in 60 years.
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