The owners of a three-bedroom villa in Grey Lynn quadrupled their money after their property sold at auction this month for $1.825 million.
The sale price was a win, listing agent Marc Collins told OneRoof, even though it was more than $1m below the property’s 2021 CV.
Collins, from Barfoot & Thompson, said he first appraised the property in 2003 for around $400,000 but the owners decided to stay put.
“The owners said to me at the time, ‘We’re not ready to sell it. We just need some finance, but if we ever do sell it, we’ll be in touch’.”
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True to their word, the owners reached out to him 20 years later and put their home on Wallingford Street on the market last month. The property received strong interest, Collins said, adding the house was sold as a do-up.
He pointed out that CVs were not reflective of market values anyway.
Another property Collins recently sold, on Warnock Street, in Westmere, came in well under its CV.
Collins said that property had been valued at $2.3m, which was also well out from the price it eventually fetched, but he noted there were often various factors that came into play, such as whether a property was subdividable or the angle of the site.
The Wallingford Street home was in need of an upgrade. Photo / Supplied
The Grey Lynn property was bought by a family from Westmere who wanted to turn the house into their dream home.
Collins said the configuration of the rooms was dated and probably another $1.2m was required to open up the house up and give it a modern look. “People live different lifestyles now. They don’t sort of go into one room, put the heater on and shut all the doors,” he said. If the house had been done up, the price point would have been quite different, probably more like $3m.
The main concern of people looking at these sorts of properties was they did not know what the building costs would be, he said.
“A lot of them pulled out when they looked at the costs involved and how much it was going to cost them but there were five people on the day [of the auction] who were registered to buy it,” Collins said.
“Some people said they’d pull the whole house down and start again, that it would be cheaper to do that than it is sometimes to renovate because you find the renovations can cost more than doing a new house quite easily.”
A stylish four-bedroom villa at 45 Baildon Road, Grey Lynn, goes to auction on March 20. Photo / Supplied
The house was built around the 1920s and Collins thought it was probably part of an early subdivision. It had nice stained-glass windows and some original features with a level up the top which could be turned into a bedroom or workspace.
Collins said most do-ups in the Grey Lynn area were selling in the high $1ms. A couple of years ago, during the boom, people were paying “drug money” for them but during the hard times last year no one wanted do-ups because it was too hard to get a builder or supplies.
“You couldn’t even get gib board. It was just in the too hard basket. That’s slowly going away but people are factoring in the costs and the interest rates.”
The market for such properties was second or third-home buyers, who had the capacity to buy and handle the upgrade. “Those people are out there. It just depends what you’re marketing as to whether you see them or not.”
Grey Lynn generally was seeing more houses on the market, which could make it more challenging for vendors as buyers had more choice, but good villas always pulled in good money, he said. “There’s definitely more confidence out there but it’s cautious confidence.”
Bayleys agent Cristina Casares, who is marketing a modernised four-bedroom villa at 45 Baildon Road, said the Grey Lynn market was not heated but there was a lot of activity. “I had open homes and open homes are busy. Maybe they’re not as busy as super-hot markets where you get like 25 groups at an open home, or maybe 20, but l had 9 or 10 so there is a lot of activity.”
People were out shopping, she said, wanting to get on with their lives.
Some properties were not selling but that was because buyers had a lot of options and were wanting to tick all their boxes.
45 Baildon Road goes to auction next week. Diverse groups of people were out looking, from young families to empty-nesters wanting something smaller in the area, and there were quite a few expats out looking.
“I have some from Seattle and another from Australia, so there are people coming back, which is really good to see.”
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