The owner of a leaky home who was prepared to sell it for $760,000, which is what he paid 13 years earlier, ended up walking away with $900,000 after a flurry of small bids.
Three groups fought over the Totara Heights home, in South Auckland, which had an RV of $1.475 million. Yet just hours before the auction was due to kick off Tuesday last week, the property had no registered interest at all.
Ray White Manukau listing agent Nelson Takle said only four people viewed the “tricky” five-bedroom, three-bathroom home with a pool during the entire campaign because of the unknown cost involved in remediating it.
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The Silkwood Grove home’s weathertightness issues were visible throughout the house, and it was eventually bought by a builder for $900,000 who planned to fix it and live in it as his family home.
“A lot of people don’t want to buy anything like that because it can cost anywhere from $300,000 / $400,000, $500,000, $600,000 to resolve or it might not even be worth spending all that money on the remedial work, so those types of properties are a bit trickier to sell.”
It also presented challenges around getting finance and there was also a risk that they could pour hundreds of thousands of dollars in fixing it only for it to reach its RV, he said. However, the Silkwood Grove property was in a good location and the land value alone was estimated to be about $650,000.
A builder bought the house to do up and live in as his family home. Photo / Supplied
The auction started slowly but sped up with three bidders actively fighting for it once the property was announced on the market at $760,000 with a total of 73 bids placed.
“It went all the way from there to $900,000 so we actually got to the promised land in the end through $1000 bids.
“It would go $1000, $1000, $1000, $1000 – and then somebody would break the pattern and do like $5000. And then it would be $1000, $1000, $1000, and then somebody would break the pattern and like round it up to boom $800,000 ... It was pretty cool.”
Takle said the owner was “over the moon” with the result. The property had been marketed as a “must sell”.
“He’s really happy with the outcome. He knows he gave me a challenging do-up, which are not that easy to sell.”
Takle said it was one of the more exciting auctions on Tuesday especially because it went from having zero people registered for the auction to five within the space of an hour.
“Everyone was coming up and saying that was bloody entertaining. I’m kind of known for turning shit into sugar.”
In August, a Hamilton property with no code of compliance sold for $711,000 – just over half its RV of $1.3m. The four-bedroom home on Millthorpe Crescent, Pukete, was targeted specifically at builders or people in the building industry with the skills to fix it because it did not have its code of compliance and was also made from cladding associated with some leaky homes.
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