A stunning beachfront home on Auckland's North Shore sold for $17.1 million – just days before the agent got a chance to bring it to market.
The home, which had a CV of $15.8m, was snapped up at the end of last year as Bayleys agent Victoria Bidwell was putting the finishing touches to the listing photos.
The five-bedroom Hamptons-style house on Audrey Road, in Takapuna, was near-new.
Bidwell told OneRoof that the buyer asked to have a look at the house before the listing went live. “I was about to bring the property to market – we had taken photographs – but I had a buyer who I thought would like to see it first and they bought it,” she said.
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“It was brand-new and perfect. And it had a double width frontage, so every room has that spectacular view. The site was lifted up, there was a huge amount of engineering and site work which improved the views, while still retaining privacy from the walkway. It’s not been a public house, you can’t see very much from the beach.”
She added: “It was a matter of having the right buyer and the right property.”
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Bidwell had sold the property to the vendors in 2015 for $4.3m. Back then the 936sqm site was occupied by a 1990s-build house, which the vendors demolished and replaced with a new home in 2019.
Bidwell said she also inked a deal in March this year for another waterfront property, this one in Cheltenham Road, Devonport, for $8.35m and said there were further confidential deals in the pipeline.
She said that at the top end of the market she had a lot of passive buyers – people who were waiting for the right property to come along.
“That might take six weeks, or six months or six years. They always quite like the house they are living in, they’re just waiting.”
The Hamptons-style house on the waterfront on Audrey Road, Takapuna, had replaced an earlier 1990s house that had sold for $4.3m in 2015. Photo / Fiona Goodall
A stylishly renovated house on Arawa Avenue, on Cheltenham Beach in Devonport, sold to international holiday-makers for $9m. Photo / Supplied
Bidwell’s $8.35m Cheltenham Road home, discreetly hidden from the street by a treelined drive and also with the rare wide beach frontage, was bought by returning Kiwi expats.
“It’s a single storey house on a very wide frontage that’s not maximising the value. They’ve bought it to renovate,” she said.
Bidwell said that properties around Cheltenham beach were in high demand. A neighbouring house on Cheltenham Road sold last year for $8.3m.
Even smaller properties command big prices, she said, pointing to a three-bedroom semi-detached townhouse on Macky Avenue that fetched $4.75m at auction last year and a Mediterranean terrace house at the end of the beach that fetched $6m a couple of years ago in a private deal. “It’s a beautiful spot, and that’s what you have to pay.”
Precision agent Andrew Doreen, who also sells in the area, noted a pick up in buyer demand. He recently sold a four-bedroom house on Arawa Avenue, also on Cheltenham beach, for $9m.
A house on Cheltenham Road, on the beach, sold in March for $8.35m to expats who plan to renovate it. Photo / Supplied
Buyers paid $8.3m a year ago for this house on Cheltenham Road. Photo / Supplied
Dorreen said the buyers were from overseas but knew the spot well. “They had been holidaying in Cheltenham over the last five or six years and had been waiting to buy.
“They are a very lovely family who are passionate about Cheltenham. They’ve travelled around New Zealand but fell in love with this. It’s genuinely nice to see people who give the country benefit by being here.”
The stylishly renovated home on the nearly 1000sqm beachfront site had been re-positioned and upgraded over the past 10 years, and included garaging for four cars.
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