An Auckland agent who brokered two deals worth around $16 million this month has told OneRoof buyers are still active at the top-end of the market.
Ray White Remuera agent Suzanne Browne said she brokered an off-market deal for a 2.2ha lifestyle property on Ti Point, in Rodney, for $8.7m, and sold an urban loft in Eden Terrace for an undisclosed price.
Browne told OneRoof that the current challenges in the market would be familiar to agents who had worked through the dotcom crash in the early 2000s or the Global Financial Crisis several years later.
“’There’s always a deal to be done, in any market. It might take a while to educate people what to pay for a special property. And you have to be really strategic when it is a special property," she said.
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“For these places, the CV bears no relation to the market price, you just have to remove that from your head,” she said, pointing to the sale of an architect-designed showroom and apartment, complete with high-end garaging, on Upper Queen Street.
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While Browne said people told her she was mad to bring the unique property to auction, there were three buyers at the room last week. The property didn’t sell under the hammer, but Browne had a deal inked an hour later from one of the bidders.
“It had a CV of $4.5m, but the council never goes inside, they don’t see the quality. You couldn’t build a space like that today for that money.”
A designer warehouse conversion to apartments and showroom on Upper Queen Street on the city fringe sold immediately after auction earlier this month for an undisclosed sum. Photo / Supplied
Confidentiality clauses prohibit her from revealing the price or buyer, but she could disclose they knew the area well. The ground floor showroom and three carparks are now advertised for lease.
The Upper Queen Street property was commissioned by well-known Auckland gallerist and designer Gary Langsford and Vicki Vuleta 15 years ago in the then-emerging city fringe Newton. The striking property had a three-bedroom home on the upper floors and a showroom for Vuleta’s interiors store Design 55 at street level. Thanks to an influx of like-minded creative people, the area has become a cool destination, now rebranded as Uptown.
The couple had earlier told OneRoof that their planned refurbishment of the former warehouse by New York-based architect David Howell turned into a substantial reconstruction, a much bigger project than they had anticipated. The two-storey gallery-style apartment is now wrapped in a light-weight concrete, with a glass walled showroom on the ground floor and galvanised metal and tile on the carpark floor. The top floor has a courtyard garden with views across the city.
Browne said that the iconic property, which first went on the market in early 2021, took some time to find the right buyer. Cool artists and designers couldn’t afford it, while investors weren’t keen on the location. A few car collectors eyed up the tile-finished basement as a gallery for their expensive wheels, and there were also professionals thinking office work/live arrangements.
The New York-style loft apartment on Upper Queen Street had been rebuilt in 2006 by well-known designers and gallerists Vicki Vuleta and Gary Langsford. Photo / Supplied
Browne’s second deal, the off-market sale of a 2.2ha estate on Ti Point, between Matakana and Omaha, was a slower burn. Her buyer had been extremely disappointed to miss out on a luxury Hamptons-style property last year, a five-bedroom estate on 2.4ha on Tatham Road that fetched $10m, and had been looking ever since.
“It’s a very prestigious and very tightly-held community, to get into that is a very prestigious pocket. They said ‘we just want to be in Ti Point’, and I knew this place [was] for them.
“Even so, it was a six-month journey with them both. It was incredible to get their trust,” she said. The vendor had been developing his self-contained estate, complete with 250sqm house, separate accommodation and its own energy and water sources, for over 20 years.
Browne’s buyers are now selling their country estate south of Auckland and plan a full-scale renovation of their Ti Point home, and she is about to start marketing a 12ha estate on a prime part of Ti Point with a CV of over $10m.
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