A South Auckland house that was described as uninhabitable by the real estate agent tasked with selling it has been snapped up for $1.425 million
The three-bedroom brick and tile home on George Street, in Papatoetoe, had gone to auction with a reserve of just $1, attracting 40 bids in the space of five minutes.
The listing agent, Uros Bojovic, from Ray White, told OneRoof last month that the house was falling apart and unliveable in its current state.
“It’s a complete do-up. There’s no way anybody could live in there,” he said.
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Photos of the home on OneRoof showed the poor state of the home. The retro lino had been partly ripped off the kitchen floor, the carpet was threadbare and the dated yellowed wallpaper was either missing or peeling off the walls.
The elderly vendor had bought the house after moving to New Zealand from the Islands 40 years ago. Bojovic said she had found a newer home to move into and had decided to sell the property at a $1 reserve auction to show she was seriously motivated about selling.
“She can’t live there anymore,” he told OneRoof when the house hit the market.
The property has a CV of $1.675m, but $1.65m of that is land value. The house sits on a 1429sqm section zoned for terraced houses and apartments. It is down a long driveway and has a favourable height-to-boundary ratio due to backing onto the Papatoetoe Library car park.
Bojovic said the vendor’s family was at the auction and ecstatic with the result.
“They had tears in their eyes. They are just in shock at the moment, definitely in shock,” he said.
They had previously turned down offers of $800,000 and $900,000 so had achieved well beyond their expectations.
The owner could now go shopping for a newer, warmer home because she now had more than enough money to do it now, he said.
The brave move of listing the property at a $1 reserve had paid off, he said, and had given the house a lot of exposure.
The 28 registered bidders were a mix of property developers and investors placing a total of more than 40 bids. The new owner appeared to be an investor.
The property needs a major renovation and some of the lino in the kitchen is missing and the wallpaper is peeling off. Photo / Supplied
The property is accessed down a long driveway and backs on to the Papatoetoe Library car park. Photo / Supplied
Bojovic said it was one of the last remaining large sites in the central location because most of them had already been carved up by developers.
“If a developer was to pick it up for under $1m – it would definitely be a good buy.”
The property could also attract flippers, he said, but would need considerable work to bring it up to scratch and make it habitable again. However, with it being sold for a $1 reserve it could quite possibly be picked up for a price that would make it worth their while, he added.
Ahead of the auction, Bojovic said there had only been a handful of people who had shown interest. “Either everyone doesn’t think it’s a $1 reserve or they think I’m joking. The phone has been pretty dead on it, which is really surprising.”
The living room is spacious but the decor is dated and the carpet threadbare. Photo / Supplied
One of the three bedrooms. The property has a CV of $1.675m but most of that is for the land, not the house. Photo / Supplied
However, interest spiked soon after OneRoof’s story was published.
Earlier in the year several defective South Auckland homes advertised with $1 reserves attracted a flurry of interest, eventually selling under the hammer for more than half a million dollars.
A burnt-out property on Roscommon Road, in Clendon Park, marketed with a $1 reserve sold for $661,000 in February in a hotly contested auction that attracted 32 registered bidders.
In July a run-down shack on Fitzroy Street, in Papatoetoe, sold for $510,000 after going to auction with a reserve of just $1.
But not all auctions with $1 reserves have achieved such surprising results and a troubled apartment on Carrington Road sold under the hammer for just $1 after only one person bid for it at a City Sales auction in July.
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