The real estate agency behind some of the country’s biggest property deals has told OneRoof it sold six high-end Auckland homes last month for almost $50 million.
Graham Wall, who runs Wall Real Estate with sons Ollie and Andrew, was unable to disclose much about the deals but did reveal that five of the homes were sold off-market and that the prices ranged from $5.5m to $14m.
One of the sales was a three-bedroom teardown bach on Takapuna beach with a CV of more than $10m. Other sales featured in the top suburbs of Orakei, Parnell and Herne Bay, and the majority won’t settle until later this year.
Wall said the sales showed the strength of demand for high-end real estate and dismissed talk of price drops at the upper end of the market.
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He claimed his agency got higher prices for vendors because they deeply understood the value of New Zealand’s prestige homes
“In the last 15 years we’ve sold the most expensive house in Auckland nearly every year. In Herne Bay waterfront, I think 12 of the 14 top sales were us,” Wall said.
“Who better than us can decide the market value?
“People really are getting a better valuation because we’ve created these values because we’ve sold these properties for this much.”
Ollie explained that while many agents favoured auctions or tenders when selling, they preferred not to leave matters to chance.
“We experimented with all those things, but realised now is not the time to let the market decide pricing,” Ollie said.
Graham Wall, centre, with sons Andrew, left, and Ollie, right. "It’s what you know and who you know,” says Graham. Photo / Fiona Goodall
Wall added: “It’s back to the old school, having relationships to find buyers and sellers. This is how our business started and that’s what we’re good at. It’s what you know and who you know.”
“We’ve got a list of places whose owners say they’re going to sell in the next year or so. Maybe they’ve bought an apartment or the beach place is being finished, and we show their house to someone.”
He said the $14m deal they inked was typical of how they worked. “Our buyers called up and said, ‘We need XYZ, show us what you have’. We drove them around seven houses, all of them for sale but not marketed, and they narrowed it down to two, before buying the [$14m] one.
“A lot of the sellers and buyers are beautiful families, people who say to us, ‘We actually don’t know the value of our home, but we know you won’t let us down. You tell us what you can do’.
“Sometimes we’ll take an offer, but say, ‘We can get another $500,000’ and we will.”
Wall warned high-end vendors against dropping their prices. “The market will go low and then it’s self-perpetuating.
The beach house on The Strand has one of the best views of Takapuna beach and Auckland harbour. Photo / Supplied
“Agents say nothing is selling, then people are so conditioned that they’ll take a low price. What we’re seeing is that valuable property remains valuable property, but when you start mixing very expensive, high-quality assets up with average, that’s the mistake.”
He said he learned this during the 2008 GFC, when relationships helped to set prices. “We were selling the most expensive and exclusive houses and that’s when relationships count. This is how we started, and it’s a bit like the Bible, ‘As it was in the beginning’.”
The Walls told OneRoof that price-setting had turned into a bit of an office competition. When they return from seeing a new property, they’ll each write down their price expectation, based on first impressions and experience and before they’ve started checking stats and doing their research.
They’ve found that all three are pretty close to each other’s price estimate – and pretty close to the eventual selling price. “It’s targeted. People will get a better valuation.”
A modern, glass and steel mansion on Burwood Crescent, in Remuera, Auckland, sold for $20.6m in May 2023. The deal was brokered by the Walls. Photo / Supplied
Herne Bay waterfront, where the Walls sold a teardown mansion to ZURU Toys billionaires Nick and Matt Mowbray for $24.5m. Photo / Chris Tarpey
The Takapuna beach house the Walls sold last month has an interesting back story. When the listing first hit the open market, Ollie told OneRoof it had been built by two sisters 50 years ago, who “basically refused to leave”.
However, one of the sisters had died and the other had gone into care. The modest two-storey house, which sits on a 800sqm corner site on The Strand, next to the park, has one of the best views of the beach and the harbour. “It feels like it’s the only house on the beach when you’re there, you literally can’t see another house,” Ollie said.
He predicted back then that a buyer would likely demolish the existing home and build a new one on the site. “I personally think it deserves a new life. It’s very easy to develop due to the flat section and easy access with no long skinny driveways as is normal for those beachfront properties.”
In the last 12 months, the Walls listed on the open market 37 properties worth more than $325m. High-profiles sales last year included $20m for a mansion on Strathfield Lane, in Whitford; $20.6m for a glass and steel mansion on Burwood Crescent, Remuera; and $24.5m for a waterfront home on Marine Parade, in Herne Bay, which was bought by ZURU billionaires Nick and Matt Mowbray.
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