- A luxury home in St Albans, Christchurch, sold for $5.5m in an off-market deal.
- Bayleys agent Steve Ellis connected a buyer and seller, achieving $1.5m above RV for the property.
- Off-market deals often take place for privacy reasons, but may result in lower sale prices, agents warn.
A luxury home on a blue-chip street sold for $5.5 million last month in a secret off-market deal.
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Bayleys agent Steve Ellis told OneRoof he found a buyer for the five-bedroom house on Chapter Street, in St Albans, Christchurch, after “connecting the dots”.
A client had reached out to him for help in their search for a new home. The Chapter Street property immediately came to mind.
Ellis knew the vendors had tried to sell the year before but hadn’t had any luck at the price point they were after. “I just went to them and said, ‘Look, I may have a fit’,” he told OneRoof.
The Chapter Street home was a winner in the Registered Master Builders' House of the Year Awards. Photo / Supplied
“Real estate is sometimes about connecting the dots. Willing buyer and willing seller in your network and if you are aware of these things, it’s about putting people together and it does happen reasonably regularly.
“In those circumstances what often happens is the vendors will say get us this price and we are happy to sell. It probably happens mostly in the high-end of the market.”
Ellis’s vendors got almost $1.5m above RV for their state-of-the-art home, which was a winner in the Registered Master Builders’ House of the Year Awards.
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The agent has noticed an uptick in off-market deals in recent months and even though he had success with the Chapter Street property, he felt selling on-market and at auction was still the best call.
Rosa Carter, general manager for New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty in Christchurch, said one of the biggest reasons for off-market deals was privacy – some buyers and sellers liked to keep their financial business confidential. However, some off-market deals happened almost by accident.
“There is a whole host of reasons why someone might buy or sell off market, but usually there’s no reason other than you’ve just got a willing buyer and a willing seller and you’ve got a nice match of people and property as cliché as that sounds.”
Carter said off-market deals weren’t just the preserve of the wealthy – they took place at all price points.
Harcourts Gold agent Cameron Bailey: “Some people don’t want to put up with open homes." Photo / George Heard
An agent might come across a seller in winter who wasn’t quite ready to put their home on the market and then meet a buyer who was a perfect match so would introduce the two.
“Settlement terms can be very flexible – it’s a low-pressure situation. However, the buyer knows they will have to pay a good price for it otherwise ... [it’s] competition in a public market. It’s quite a privilege for a buyer to be able to buy off-market like that and for a seller too. It can just work out seamlessly.”
Harcourts Gold agent Cameron Bailey said he had been involved in “quite a few” off-market deals in the last few months.
“At the moment not all the listings are online because some people don’t want to come to the market because they feel like there’s a lot of competition, so they are quite happy to sell it off-market.”
He added: “Some people don’t want to put up with open homes and if the agent is good enough to know the right buyer that’s going to pay the right money off-market then it can make it easy. I’m sort of a believer that if it all fits and works, it’s meant to be. Sometimes the best buyer is there – I think the best agents in town have the best buyers hanging around them.
“I’m not saying it’s the best process, but you can certainly get great results off-market.”
Bayleys Canterbury general manager Rachel Dovey had noticed a slight lift in off-market sales, but warned vendors they might sell for less than they would have if they sold on the open market.
“It’s always got to be exceptional terms because you don’t know what you are missing out on.”
Dovey said some off-market deals happened because the sellers were extremely private and didn’t want their property splashed all over the internet, but also if the property or location was unique.
“It tends to be not just higher end, but more specialty locations or types of property.”
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