A four-bedroom plaster home on the outskirts of Christchurch suddenly became the most wanted property in New Zealand’s auction rooms last week, when it attracted 134 bids in just 15 minutes.
Auctioneers told OneRoof that the number of bids lodged at the Harcourts Gold sale was extraordinary – and would be unusual even in a heated market.
The lifestyle block on Queen Elizabeth II Drive, in Mairehau, sold for $1.371 million – more than $180,000 above its 2022 RV.
The auction started at $800,000 and quickly passed the $1m mark as four determined buyers duked it out.
Start your property search
Harcourts Gold auctioneer Mark Morrison said most of the bids were lodged after the property was announced on the market at $1.155m, with the last two bidders in the game trying to outdo each other in increments of $1000-$3000.
Discover more:
- ‘Expect to see more of them’: Lifestyle block with $2m RV to be sold at mortgagee auction
- Country family’s $4m bid wins heated auction, smashes suburb price record
- Auckland woman emerges triumphant after $3m auction ‘street fight’
“It was basically a two-horse race,” Morrison told OneRoof, adding that 134 bids were the most made on a single property he could recall in his four years as an auctioneer. It was possibly a record for Harcourts Gold as well.
"That was something else. It was a lot of small bids just chipping away. No one really put $20,000 on to try and finish it. They just punched and counter-punched.”
The property’s unique selling point, which likely triggered the bidding war, was the large landholding, he said. “The house was tidy but needed probably a little bit of modernising and work. But it was a good starting point.” The 5520sqm property was marketed by Harcourts agent Jack Milligan.
Auction managers around the country were astounded by the result. Bayleys national auction manager Conor Patton told OneRoof 100 plus bids was a high number of bids in any market.
The highest number of bids placed at a Bayleys auction since April was 142 bids for a lifestyle property on Mill Road in Bombay. At the peak of the market in 2021, a whopping 200 bids were made during a brought-forward auction for a waterfront home on Waitotara Way in the Whitianga Waterways, Coromandel.
The four-bedroom, two-bathroom home was tidy and well-presented. Photo / Supplied
The big drawcard for the property was the land size. Photo / Supplied
Patton said a heap more bids were made on properties when the market was red hot and the average number of bids made in 2021 was 13.5 compared to an average of four bids per auction now.
“What that shows is that we’ve got a lot more one-bidder auctions than what we did ... It’s about getting one or two bids and then pausing and negotiating and there’s a lot more of those than we had at the peak.”
Often the auctions that got a lot of bids was when the bidding started low and rose in small increments, he said, whereas other auctions started high and moved up in much larger amounts such as $20,000 or $50,000 but were equally successful.
Harcourts national auction manager Shane Cortese said when bidders were getting into a $1000 battle the best thing the buyer could do was “change it up”.
“Go in with a hammer blow of $10,000 or $15,000 rather than go one for one.”
A recent standout was a two-bedroom, one-bathroom cottage on Wolsey Street, in Milford, which saw about five bidders place more than 50 bids in a mortgagee auction. The property was announced on the market at $855,000 and sold for $965,000.
Ray White head auctioneer Sam Steele said investment-type properties were often the ones that attracted a lot of bids. Photo / Fiona Goodall
“Generally you’re not seeing the 50, 60, 70 bid numbers you see in a high-flying market, but you are seeing very contentious bidding from people who want to buy property and that could be three, four, five bids and that doesn’t matter that’s three, four or five unconditional offers on your property in the open environment.”
While generally speaking there weren’t too many people bidding at auctions, he said those who did were often rewarded for it and given the first option to negotiate with the buyer outside the auction room.
Ray White head auctioneer Sam Steele called an auction last month for a basic bungalow on Princes Street, in Otahuhu that attracted 176 bids in 13 minutes. It took him back to 2021 when auctions were at full speed and an auction for an Auckland property he was calling reached 250 bids.
“Those are extreme numbers. For an auction to have 30 or 40 bids is a pretty active auction,” he said.
“If you are getting auctions that are getting 100, 150 or 200 bids you can pretty much guarantee that was an absolute standout price in the market. Because if it’s getting down to those small increments it’s at a level past what the owners were expecting and it’s just an auction that’s kept going.”
While he had seen a whole mix of properties get a lot of bids, he said it was often investment-type properties such as the 870sqm freehold section on Princes Street that caused bidding frenzies. “Often [with investment properties] people don’t know what they are prepared to pay for it until they see someone trying to take it away from them.”
* A previous version of this story referred to a 187 bids. The correct number was 134. OneRoof apologises for the error.
- Click here to find more properties for sale
