A luxury apartment smashed the sales record for Ohope’s most expensive apartment when it sold under the hammer for $1.71 million as buyers battled it out for one of the few apartments for sale in the popular beach town.
That impressive sale could soon be joined by another record this year if a builder’s own beachfront home on the Bay of Plenty town's Ocean Road sells for its price indication of around $3m.
The Ray White auction for the three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in the Horizon Apartments of Ohope Beach, on Pohutukawa Avenue, saw three bidders go head to head.
One bowed out at about $1.4m, leaving just two buyers to fight it out, with the apartment eventually going to out-of-town buyer couple who plan to use as their holiday home.
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Ray White listing agent Tony Bonne said it was a fantastic auction, noting that the seller was over the moon with the result. “Anybody that gets more than their reserve is generally very happy.”
The sale price trumps the $1.172m record set in July 2021 for a three-bedroom apartment in the same block.
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Bonne said the sale price was a good one, especially in a softer market. “When you get demand and you get competition, you can still get those extraordinary prices,” he said.
The apartment is one of the larger ones in the block, and was initially built for the developer’s parents, so came with extra elements such as three carparks, walk-in wardrobes, and underfloor heating. “As soon as people walked into it, they fell in love with it,” Boone said
He said the buyers eventually plan to live in the apartment full-time when they retire.
Bonne said there was a scarcity of apartments for sale with only one for sale in Whakatane and two in Ohope. The Ohope apartments are both in the Beachpoint complex where a two-bedroom, two-bathroom, two-carpark apartment has an asking price of $1.05m. “There’s been no new apartment buildings been built for a number of years.”
The central Horizon Apartments is always sought after due to its close proximity to the shops and beach. Photo / Supplied
There is a shortage of high-end properties, such as this home at 344a Ocean Road for sale, in Ohope. Photo / Supplied
But it’s just not apartments that are hard to find. Harcourts Whakatane owner Wayne Pamment said there was also a shortage of good properties in the $2.5m-plus price range in Ohope.
“That high-end stuff – that really bling, bling, yeeha. Nobody has really got too much of that. There’s a lot of old properties lying around Ohope and for people that have got serious money, they don’t want old, and they don’t want to do too much work. They want flashy and glitzy.”
The current record for the most expensive home in Ohope is held by a modern beachfront home on Plantation Reserve, which sold for a whopping $4.65m in January 2022. While the most expensive property to sell so far this year is a five-bedroom, three-bathroom home on Tawai Street that fetched $1.819m in February.
A five-bedroom, three-bathroom home at 344a Ocean Road has just been listed by Harcourts agent Anna Robertson with a price indication of around $3m and, Pamment said, will appeal to buyers looking for a high-spec, high-quality beachfront home.
The near-new home can be separated into a three-bedroom home upstairs, while the two-bedroom self-contained apartment downstairs is currently run as an Airbnb.
Pamment said it was likely to be bought as a holiday home or by a semi-retired couple with a high net worth.
“It is to a very good spec. It’s got some really nice features – very high studs. Every room feels big and grand. Even the bedrooms feel good like that,” he said.
“The only thing it’s probably missing is some sort of a lift. What we often see with these types of homes at this sort of level is people will put a lift into them to future-proof them.”
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