An 87% clearance rate at a large Queenstown auction last week shows that the city is in comeback mode.
Thirteen out of 15 lots sold at the Bayleys auction, two of them before the auction began, with the two remaining lots under negotiation and likely to settle soon
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“Queenstown has gone from strength to strength,” said Bayleys national auction manager Conor Patton.
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“Nationwide, you’d point to February and March being the peak, but now Queenstown seems to be catching up.”
Attending the auction were buyers from Auckland and Wellington, local developers and an Australian who’d flown in for the auction.
“That’s possible now,” said Patton.
The standout sale was a 1012 sqm block of land at 21 Caernarvon Street in the middle of Arrowtown, which sold for $2.3m, almost double its rating valuation of $1.16m.
The listing agent, Gavin Castles, said that there were 11 people in the room looking to buy, with the property attracting 31 bids. The property was snapped up by Kiwi expats based in Singapore.
Big blocks of land are rare in Arrowtown, so the site at Caernarvon Street was in high demand. Photo / Supplied
“It just went crazy. It was really down to four bidders and then the last two went for it,” he said.
“People are just waiting for these sites. They are – pardon the pun – gold.
“We didn’t know what it was going to go for, that’s why we do an auction. There’s definitely surging Australian interest. This is considered the greatest place in the country."
Castles said that while properties in nearby Millbrook get pretty high numbers, people wanted to be nearer to the town itself, “if you can get land”.
An investor property at Belfast Terrace, in Queenstown, fetched $1.8m. Photo / Supplied
An investor property at Belfast Terrace, a four-bedroom 307sqm home with a 300-day visitor accommodation approval, attracted interest from Australians, as well as New Zealanders, said the listing agent Sheryl Williams.
“There were two Australian bidders, one of them had flown it and it sold to them for $1.8 million. There were actually fewer Aucklanders than I thought,” she said.
Williams said she was now seeing more listings come onto the market, in anticipation of the ski season.
Patton noted that bidding action in Queenstown was back to pre-Covid levels, with half the properties on the block selling above the reserve and the other half pausing to negotiate before going back on the market.
A local developer bought a block of land in Frankton, on the market for the first time since 1957, for $1.25m. Photo / Supplied
“That’s a good ratio, and shows there’s more competition to get properties on the market than a couple of months ago.”
He added that vendors were more realistic than when the market was galloping ahead, now realising that the rate of growth is not what it was at the market peak earlier this summer.
Bidding was strong for a six-bedroom property at Avalon Crescent, Fernhill, which went for $1.35m after 36 bids. The 210 sq m house on 617 sqm section had a 2017 rating valuation of $930,000 and was bought by an Auckland investor.
A six-bed property at 28 Avalon Crescent Fernhill, went for $1.35m after 36 bids. Photo / Supplied
David Gubb, managing director of Bayleys Queenstown, said that the sale of a 1007 sqm plot of land on Frankton Road to a local developer for $1.25m was a good sign. The property, with a basic one-bedroom crib, was on the market for first time since 1957, and had a rating valuation of $890,000.
“That’s got to be good for this town. It’s a good sign that we had local developers buying. They know the market and have confidence.”
“We saw a lot of outside buyers, more than we’d had before. They’re coming back, buying to use themselves and then rent out. Our over 80 percent clearance rate is good, there was a wide range of buyers.”
Auckland and Invercargill investors also snapped up bargain properties at Riverton, on the southern coast 30 minutes out of Invercargill, where two three- bedroom went for $360,000 and $505,000. An Auckland investor bought a four-bedroom lifestyle property on just over 2ha for $860,000, well above its $475,000 valuation.
And bidders were still putting their hands up over the weekend, when the charity auction for Ronald McDonald House that Patton called raised $35,000.
