A chain of tense real estate deals in West Auckland left everyone in tears, including the agent, OneRoof can reveal.
When newbie Nadia Johnston, of Ray White NorthWest, secured a listing in Swanson on her birthday back in December she was delighted, but the listing also set off a chain of conditional offers.
At stake, was the sale of not one house, not two, not three, but four houses – and if one fell over, they all fell over.
The pressure of the last six months almost proved too much, with Johnston telling OneRoof she was biting her nails down to the quick and had burst into tears in her boss’s office.
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She had only been in real estate two years when she picked up the Swanson listing in David Rogers Lane. However, the market was flat and there was little interest in the six-bedroom, four-bathroom home, which included granny flat.
But then she got an offer of $1.5 million, just $95,000 shy of the CV. The owners accepted, but there was a catch: the buyer had to sell not one but two houses if he was going to go make the deal work and go unconditional.
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On the market went the buyers’ family home on William Wallbank Crescent, in Swanson, and a rental on Glengarry Road, in Glen Eden.
The buyer wanted to sell the rental first and keep living in the family home, but the family home sold first for $950,000.
Buyers were thin on the ground for the rental but one eventually appeared and made an offer – but that too was conditional on selling their own house, on Bruce McLaren Road, in Henderson.
First on the market was a six-bedroom house on David Rogers Lane, in Swanson, Auckland. Photo / Supplied
The buyer of the David Rogers Lane property needed to sell their own home, on William Wallbank Crescent, in Swanson and a rental on Glengarry Road in Glen Eden. Photo / Supplied
Johnston brought in colleague Sahil Mehta to help with the negotiations but reached out to others in her office.
“We were just pushing these houses to be sold. I wasn’t sleeping. I was so stressed,” said the mum of three.
“Having the pressure of selling your vendors’ biggest asset, and if one thing went wrong, it would all fall. They’d lose the houses that they were living in and they were pretty much depending on us. Sometimes they’d call us crying, like, ‘What if this house doesn’t sell, we’ve got nowhere to go’.”
Auctions did not work and agents worked hard at changing marketing and selling methods but even so people were not coming through the door.
Around the five-month mark, the owner of the David Rogers Lane was running out of patience and talking about pulling their home from the market. That decision would have left their buyers in a lurch given that their family home had already sold.
The rental on Glengarry Road, in Glen Eden. Photo / Supplied
But along came a buyer for the rental. Johnston was able to convince the owner of the David Rogers Lane property to hold on for a bit longer.
“I had to call her and say, ‘I’m so sorry, it’s conditional to another house sale’ and she was just like ‘Nah, I can’t do it’. I said, ‘Look, give me six weeks to sell this next house then if you need to pull it from the market, you can pull it’.”
Johnston said the stress and lack of sleep got to her. At one point she thought: “I’m going to leave it to God and the universe and whatever happens, happens.”
That’s when, finally, the fourth house in the chain sold for $777,777, and the rest of the houses went unconditional, plus, as a bonus, another one Johnston was selling.
“From 4pm last Friday I had four properties go unconditional, sold, sold, sold, sold.”
Johnston said she joined a gym halfway through the ordeal to try to help de-stress. “The number of times I walked into my boss’s office and said ‘I'm leaving real estate’ and just started crying.”
Now it’s all over, and she said real estate is her passion and she would do it all again, although perhaps not with so many houses at stake.
The lesson is that in a market like the current one agents have to do everything they can to get houses sold, she said.
The final piece of the puzzle was a house on Bruce McLaren Road, in Henderson. Photo / Supplied
Johnston's post on Facebook announcing all four deals. Photo / Supplied
“You can’t just sit there, turn up to open homes and wait for the property to sell. You have to try different strategies, you have to constantly change your marketing, your pictures, go from price buyer negotiation and if that’s not working maybe asking price, and if that’s not working you do inquiries over,” she told OneRoof.
“There’s just so much competition out there a buyer can come through and if there’s one little thing they don’t like they’ll go to the next house.”
Ray White NorthWest director Ronald Hachache said he’s proud of Johnston – and revealed he kept a box of tissues on his desk for stressed agents.
“Having chained deals isn’t unusual in itself but having four in the chain is unusual, especially in this market because to get one contract on a property is difficult as it is so to have to get them all in a certain period, it’s incredibly challenging.”
Hachache said market conditions were the most challenging he had seen. Buyers have fallen away due to a range of factors, from legislation, to serviceability calculators at the banks, to property prices on the way down seeing buyers hold off trying to time the market.
On top of that, the market is over-saturated with stock. People are selling up rental stock and homeowners are selling up as well, often for a loss, because they are struggling to pay the mortgage.
“We’ve got vendors right now who purchased last year that can’t afford to pay that mortgage.
“They can’t afford to hold these properties, and they’re owner-occupied and they’re selling them this year for a loss.”
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