- An Auckland penthouse in St Lukes Gardens sold for $52,000 after strong bidding.
- The property, part of a leaky building complex, requires $700,000 in repairs.
- The buyer aims for equity gain, with the apartment potentially worth over $1m post-repairs.
An Auckland penthouse that had been pitched at “reckless” buyers has sold for $52,000.
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The three-bedroom apartment on Morningstar Place, in St Lukes Gardens, was snapped up after strong bidding at Ray White’s auction today.
The reserve had been set at an ultra-low $1 and while the opening bid was $9 more than the vendor was prepared to accept, determined buyers in the auction room pushed the price of the property up to a more comfortable level.
All up 37 bids were placed in the space of three minutes.
Ray White listing agent Grant Elliott admitted he was a bit stressed going into the auction. Six buyers had registered to bid but only two put their hand up. “There were other people sitting in the room ... everyone else just watched those two,” Elliott told OneRoof.
He was unsure of the buyer’s exact plans, but said he wouldn’t be able to do much for 14 months while repairs were carried out at the block.
The St Lukes Gardens Apartments complex has been dubbed the country’s biggest leaky building, and even featured in a documentary called A Living Hell: Apartment Disasters, which aired last year.
The three-bedroom penthouse will be empty for about a year while the remedial work is carried out. Photo / Supplied
It was built between 2003 and 2011 and has serious defects and leaks including cracking facades to dangerously substandard foundations.
A settlement was made with the apartment owners after they launched a $60 million claim against the council and other parties in 2016, but the amount awarded was not enough to cover all the costs.
Elliott told OneRoof last week that the vendor had been awarded $355,000 – about a third of what he needed for his $1m share of the repairs.
Elliott said the buyer would have access to the settlement money but would still have to stump up a further $700,000 to complete the project.
The first lump sum of $98,000 is needed within the month and a further $394,000 will be required while the work is carried out.
The Ray White listing on OneRoof made no bones about the property’s drawbacks. “This spacious three-bedroom monster offers a rare opportunity for the brave, the adventurous or the just plain reckless. If that’s not you, do not read on,” it said.
Elliott said the buyer was “going for the equity gain”.
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The vendor will move out of the penthouse in three weeks when the sale settled.
“I rang him before and he said thank you very much. At the start he just wanted to know how much it would cost to sell.”
His initial plan had been to get enough to cover the selling costs including commission and legal fees, but Elliot said he had even managed to get a little extra in his pocket.
The repairs could take several years to complete. However, once done, the new owner could be sitting on an apartment worth more than $1m.
There were surprises at the other end of the market in Ray White’s auction room today. The vendors of a four-bedroom, three-bathroom property on Cloverley Crescent, in Auckland’s Campbells Bay, had an unexpected windfall after their property sold for an extra $300,000.
The listing for the property had only been live for two weeks when the auction was bought forward after an acceptable offer of $3.2m was made. However, there was extra competition for the development property.
Ray White listing agents Leo Zhang and Kristine Liu had marketed it at developers because it had a resource consent to build six freestanding homes on the 1042sqm section, which was at the end of a cul-de-sac and just 500m from Campbells Bay.
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