The head of a global film and TV company sold her Auckland home for $2.26 million under the hammer at the weekend after a surge of last-minute buyer interest.
Melanie Bridge, joint CEO of The Sweetshop, which produces documentaries and commercials, told OneRoof she was relieved to get a sale in “the most horrible market ever”.
“There’s so much pessimism. We were getting low-balled throughout,” she said, adding that her family was "thrilled" with the result.
“We’re really stoked,” she said.
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The buyer sought out Bridge’s house in Matakatia Bay, on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, after spotting a OneRoof news article about it last Thursday.
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They contacted the listing agent, Ben Gibson, from Harcourts, straightaway. “The buyer called me on the Thursday, came up to see the place for the first time on the Saturday and bought it on the Sunday,” Gibson told OneRoof.
“He kept saying, ‘We don’t know how we’d missed it, but when we saw it we knew’,” Gibson said, adding that he’d never seen such a response from buyers to a story about a property.
Sunday’s auction attracted 25 people on site, only two of whom were active bidders, with a slew of buyers hoping to step in with conditional offers if the property passed in.
Owner Melanie Bridge gave the Lockwood house a bright and light makeover. Photo / Supplied
The Bridge family compare the bay to the best of Fiji. Photo / Supplied
Bidding got to $2.26m before a pause for negotiations, when the property was declared on market and sold under the hammer.
Gibson said most buyers had been expecting to see the place go for around its CV of $2.1m. “In the third week of a campaign, you’d be lucky to get one or two new enquiries. But after the [OneRoof article was published] we had over 20 enquiries. People kept saying they didn’t know this place existed,” he said of the bay.
Gibson said there were only 30 or so waterfront places on Matakatia Parade, about 16 of which he said had never changed hands since the 1980s and 1990s.
The agent said that most of the enquiry had come from people who wanted a bach close to the city which they could turn into their retirement home.
Bridge told OneRoof ahead of the auction that she regarded the spot as one of the best she'd ever been to.
“I’ve travelled the world for my job, seeing amazing places but I know it’s a fantastic lifestyle here in this beautiful little bay,” she said.
Melanie Bridge, right, with her Sweetshop co-founder Sharlene George. Photo / Sweetshop
“There are about 30 houses along the beachfront with a little road in front and it’s only a couple of metres from our property to the sand.
“It’s paradise for people who like swimming, fishing, paddleboarding, boating and water-skiing or walking your dogs along the beach. We often feel like we’re in Fiji.”
Bridge and her husband Jack had been living on a farm in Paremoremo, on Auckland’s North Shore, when they stumbled upon Matakatia Bay while out on a drive. “We saw a perfect, sleepy beachside street and the clearest turquoise water we’ve seen in Auckland,” she said.
A few years later in 2021, they bought their four-bedroom 1990s Lockwood on Matakatia Parade for $2.221m. They had planned initially to use it as a bach but they then decided to make it their permanent home.
Bridge said it was the right move, and in her listing on OneRoof she listed all the highlights. “We’ve hosted parties, celebrated Christmas on the beach, and my mother’s wedding at 80 under the pohutukawas. Our boys have waterskied, paddleboarded with dolphins, spearfished snapper 50 metres offshore, and caught kahawai from the grass. We’ll never leave this bay, having moved just two doors down.”
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