A 1920s stucco bungalow in Remuera sold under the hammer for $5.005 million in a hard-fought auction. The owners had paid just £5000 for it in 1942.
When they bought the three-bedroom house on a 1169sqm site on Glenbrook Street, Remuera, it sold on a hand shake, said the marketing agent Gill Macdonald, of Barfoot & Thompson.
“The owners’ parents bought the house for £5000. It’s a lovely story,” she said. “Because it was so difficult to raise money, the seller, who was a knight of the realm they tell me, did it on a handshake and said they could just pay it back when they got the money.”
An inflation calculator shows that sum would be the equivalent of $511,000 today.
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She said the two sons of the owner, who died a few years ago, were ecstatic at the sale price. One of the grandsons had been living in the house until the sale.
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“One of the sons had tears in his eyes, remembering riding his trike on the driveway as a toddler. They told me that I’m the best agent in New Zealand, they can barely take it in,” she said.
Macdonald said that interest in the original-condition house came entirely from developers, with over 40 viewings of the property and over six bidders fighting for the property.
After 66 bids, including some 30 bids after the property was declared on the market at $4.66m, the hammer came down. Three final bidders fought it out in strong amounts right through to the end.
“Places like this in such a quality location don’t come up very often,” said Macdonald.
The house on Glenbrook Road, in double grammar school zone, still had many of the original features from when the family bought it 80 years ago. Photo / Supplied
The house is one of the last single-family homes left in the street. Photo / Supplied
The bay-fronted house still sported floral Axminster carpet, the original kitchen and bathrooms and tile fireplaces. It had 1960s-era addition and garage/workshop in the back, and a large front lawn, complete with traditional stone terraces and rose bushes in the front.
But the value of the property was in its 1169sqm of double grammar zoned land. Aerial photos of the concrete and tile houses show it is one of the last single houses in the sought-after street that runs between Victoria Avenue and Spencer Street.
“We had very busy open homes. At the very first viewings, we hadn’t even had open homes, people wanted to put in pre-auction offers. The feedback on the price was around the CV of $4.6m, the land value was $4.3m,” Macdonald said, adding that developers were starting to reappear in the market.
A four-bedroom house on Bongard Road, St Heliers, sold for $3.85m. Photo / Supplied
In other auctions, a St Heliers property, marketed by Barfoot & Thompson agents Paul Neshausen and Jo Bowden, sold for $3.85m. Bidding on the Bongard Road property swept past the $3.7m on-the-market price before the hammer came down 20 bids later.
The stylishly updated four-bedroom Californian bungalow with a swimming pool on a large 953sqm site had a CV of $4.05m and OneRoof records show it last changed hands in 2016 for $2.8m.
Four other properties sold for over $2m in other Barfoot & Thompson auctions.
A three-bedroom apartment on Shelly Beach Road, St Marys Bay, sold for $3m. Photo / Supplied
A four-bedroom Arts and Crafts house on Seccombes Road, Epsom, also in double grammar zone, fetched $2.448m, comfortably over its $2.175m CV. In St Heliers, a 1213sqm site with a four-bedroom house at the end of the cul de sac on Berowald Place, went for $2.483m. It was the first time the property had been on the market in 54 years. Zoned for suburban density, it had a CV of $3.375m.
In Stonefields, a four-bedroom home with an updated kitchen on Garin Way sold for $2.11m – just under its 2021 CV of $2.15m. It sold six years ago for $1.64m.
A five-bedroom home on a 1480sqm site on Kimpton Road, Papatoetoe, pitched for its suburban density development potential, went for $2.426m – just over its on-the-market price of $2.411m. Records show it had sold back in May 2022 for $2.225m – well over its $1.85m CV, so the short-term owner managed to make a paper gain of $375,000 in 18 months.
In Bayleys auction rooms, a four-bedroom villa on Hakanoa Street, Grey Lynn, went for $2.695m. That price was just under its $2.95m CV but a handy gain on the $160,000 the owners paid in 1991. It was pitched as a do-up in the popular street, close to Grey Lynn park and shops.
A three-bedroom apartment with Harbour Bridge views on Shelly Beach Road, St Marys Bay, sold for $3m – $2150,000 over its CV and $800,000 more than it changed hands for five years ago.
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