Almost 200 people crowded into the backyard for the auction of a modest three-bedroom bungalow in Auckland’s Mount Eden at the end of last month.
The house on Waitomo Avenue sold under the hammer for $1.62 million – $145,000 above the reserve – a result that surprised both the sellers and the auctioneer.
The property had been on the market for less than a week when the vendors brought the auction forward after accepting an offer of $1.475m.
Ray White agent Jane Horgan, who marketed the home with colleague John Campbell, told OneRoof they were caught off guard by the number of people who turned up at the first weekend of open homes.
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“It was a horrible miserable rainy day and we were getting on average 46 groups through each open home,” she said.
Fortunately, the weather had improved a few weeks later for the onsite auction last Saturday. Almost 200 people turned up to watch 14 bidders vie for the property.
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Horgan said: “Some of them were out obviously after the first bid, which is not uncommon.”
The bidders whose offer brought the auction forward and set the reserve ended up missing out, with the bungalow going to a couple who paid $95,000 above the $1.525m CV to have an Auckland bolthole.
Horgan said most of the interest was from first-home buyers and investors, who liked the fact it was a beautiful home they could move into straight away.
The Waitomo Ave sale came just days after the auction for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom reclad and renovated home on Clonbern Road, in Remuera, which sold for an impressive $1.977m. It was also $252,000 more than its CV of $1.725m.
A family had already sold their previous property and fought off 10 other registered bidders to secure their new home.
Well-presented homes under $2m, such as this one on Waitomo Avenue, are in demand. Photo / Supplied
A three-bedroom, two-bathroom home on Clonbern Road, in Remuera, Auckland, was popular with buyers. Photo / Supplied
Horgan said the open homes had been swarming with people and they had been left gobsmacked after 82 groups viewed it during the first weekend. “We thought ‘wow’,” she said.
“We thought it was a one-off. It ended up having 213 groups through and 11 registered bidders at the auction.”
The seller picked up the plaster property for $1.055m last October. It was reclad and renovated before being flipped for almost $1m more.
The fact that it was an entry-level, like-new freestanding home in double grammar zone had been a huge drawcard for buyers, she said.
Horgan said both properties showed there was strong demand for well-presented homes valued under $2m on the city fringes.
“We could probably give you a story each week at the moment. The sub-$2m market – our open homes have been heaving.”
Ray White auctioneer John Bowring, who called the Waitomo Ave auction, said there had been an increase in the average number of bidders per auction, from 1.3 to 2.3. “Buyers are starting to make their way back into the auction room.”
Harcourts national auction manager Shane Cortese agreed, saying more people were attending and also actively engaging in auctions. “Your bidder numbers are increasing two-fold. People are saying ‘OK I’m actually going to buy now’ and they are putting their hand up and they bid and that has grown incrementally over the last four weeks.”
He couldn’t pinpoint it to a particular property type or value, but said buying in the central Auckland fringe area for under $2m was “probably a good buy at the moment”. “It wasn’t that three years ago right, $2m was pretty much the cut-off.”
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