The Auckland inner-city villa that was transformed from a headline-making dump to a stunner sold last week for more than $2 million.
And the buyer of the villa had only viewed the property the day before the auction.
They were one of five bidders for the three-bedroom home on Buchanan Street, Kingsland. The property passed in at $2.075m, but sold later that day for a sum over that, said the Bayleys agent Jack Davies who marketed the property with Brittany Broadbent.
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The Bayleys agents had invited agents from other real estate companies to show the property to their clients so the eventual buyer was brought by Barfoot & Thompson agent Ben Buchanan.
“We, as a team, always welcome conjunctional agents, it only helps the vendor,” Davies told OneRoof.
“This was a great result for our vendors and now they can move on to their next purchase.”
Davies said media coverage of the house drew a massive 90 groups of buyers to the open homes.
The Buchanan Street villa in Kingsland had been in the same ownership for over 50 years when it sold in June 2020 for $1.14m. Photo / Supplied
The backyard of the dilapidated villa, pre-renovation. Photo / Supplied
The owners replaced the back of the villa with a new kitchen and living room extension, adding a deck and a tandem carport. Photo / Supplied
“All that extra exposure in the news helped. It was a real pleasure seeing that stack of shoes outside the door,” he said.
He said some viewers had looked at the property’s 2021 CV of $1.675m but quickly realised that did not take into account the quality of the renovation (the house was still valued at just $100,000) and that the property would likely fetch over $2m.
“It was mostly movers, some downsizers moving from bigger character homes wanting something done. A lot of people from Kingsland, they like to be close to the city.
“Everybody was very, very impressed with the quality. They saw this as a new old house.”
Buchanan said that he had recently sold the buyer’s house in an off-market deal that was conditional on their finding another house, so with two weeks to run on the deal, he had shown them the renovated villa.
“It was a good situation, a good price and we didn’t want to lose that. Kingsland does tend to go against the grain,” he said.
The original kitchen in the lean-to. Photo / Supplied
The luxurious new kitchen which opens to living, dining and the deck. Photo / Supplied
The vendors, Clarke and Kelsey Baker, who lived on the same street, bought the house at auction in June 2020, paying a remarkable $1.14m just as the housing market was picking up after Covid.
The property, on the market for the first time in 50 years, was billed as a “genuine, no holds barred, doer-upper dream”.
The couple, who had a toddler at the time, rolled up their sleeves and by early 2021 had completely turned the house around, sparing no expense on the renovation of what they intended as their forever home. However, with a second baby and now a third on the way, they needed to move.
“They enjoyed the whole renovating process, they’ve probably spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands on the renovation,” Broadbent earlier told OneRoof.
They ripped off a series of lean-tos at the back of the house to build a brand-new open-plan dining, kitchen, and living area, with a new laundry, adding a deck and pergola and there are two brand-new bathrooms.
The sitting room is in the original part of the house. Photo / Supplied
They also put in a new driveway and installed a tandem carport and the front of the house was brought back to its original glory after a dilapidated sunroom was removed and the verandah restored.
Broadbent said the renovated house got new insulation, new piles along the boundary walls, updated electrical and plumbing and some of the original sash windows got double glazing.
“The kitchen is just beautiful, it’s got Italian tapware, colonial door handles, they’ve got great taste,” she earlier told OneRoof.
“We’re finding buyers in the market, they’d rather just pay for something that’s done, and done well. It’s a quality renovation, everyone is saying, their presentation, their styling, you can see they haven’t skimped on anything,” she said.
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