Buyers priced out of Auckland's wealthy central city suburbs are taking their money across the bridge and driving up house prices there.
Feeling the effect of increased attention are Birkenhead, Northcote Point and Beach Haven - suburbs that city buyers used to overlook.
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“Before the first lockdown maybe five to ten percent of buyers in Birkenhead were from the city. Now it’s closer to 20 percent,” said Harcourts agent Travers Smyth.
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“You get that inner city feel with character bungalows and villas, and that village feel. Houses you get here for $1.9 million would start at $2 million in Grey Lynn.”
Smyth said that clients who had been looking in the central city and then came back to the North Shore with a good budget, bidding “with Grey Lynn and Ponsonby prices on their mind".
He points to an immaculately renovated bungalow on Birkenhead Point’s Hinemoa Street which sold earlier this year to a buyer from the Ponsonby-Herne Bay area for a record $4.45 million and another that went on Northcote Point for $4.5 million.
84 Verran Road, in Birkdale, Auckland, sold to a buyer from over the bridge. Photo / Supplied
49 Seaview Avenue, in Birkenhead, sold for just over $4 million. Photo / Supplied
Auctioneer Tim Obern from Apollo Auctions said that buyers saw Birkenhead as offering good value. After looking at prices Grey Lynn and Ponsonby, they "think they’re getting tremendous bargains".
“Birkdale has gone off - it’s crazy. It was a nothing suburb two or three years ago, now people are paying $1.7 million.
“There are nice old Ponsonby-esque villas, but with a price difference of $1 million or $2 million."
Obern said that that trend had been evident only in the last six or 12 months. There was a sense that people were coming in with “virtually unlimited budgets - it’s city money", he said.
A renovated 1950s house at 2/22 Aeroview Road, in Beach Haven, sold for $1.175 million. Photo / Supplied
Ray White Birkenhead general manager Lauren Davies said: “People with North Shore budgets are getting blown out, thinking ‘Wow, how did you get that money?’
“Places that we thought would get $830,000 to $880,000 on a good market are getting $1.175 million. Crazy."
Ray White agent Rochelle Brinsdon said she had several city-based buyers competing for a renovated 1950s weatherboard house at 2/22 Aeroview Drive, in Beach Haven, which sold for $1.175 million. A villa at 84 Verran Road, in Birkdale, and a renovated bungalow at 52 Rangitira Road, in Beach Haven, both fetched good prices from buyers south of the bridge.
“People who’ve lived on the other side, but looked over here to buy, they know they get more for their money. And now they can work from home or have more freedom from the office. They are not bothered by the commute.
“It’s always about the character homes. We have people coming into the suburb because they’re just following the house. They perceive that it’s more affordable than similar houses on the other side of the bridge. We have buyers from Westmere and from St Heliers.”
Premium on the Points Trish Love recently sold an immaculately renovated villa at 49 Seaview Avenue, Birkenhead, for $4.05 million to buyers who had been living in the city. At that price, they are re-doing kitchens, landscaping and re-decorating before they move in. She has another on the market at 52 Hinemoa Street on a sprawling 1510sqm site with city and sea views, and an asking price of $4.5 million. It has been getting enquiries from both locals and city-siders.
A Birkenhead mansion with city and sea views has an asking price of $4.5 million. Photo / Supplied
It is not just character properties that are pulling buyers across the bridge. Ray White agent Ali Hellesloe, with Angela Bloomfield, sold an attractive brick and tile unit at 2/35 Evelyn Place, in Hillcrest, this week for way more than expected.
“It was not so much first home buyers, but investors. We had 116 groups through in six weeks and about 30 of those were investors. The common theme was that a unit like this would go for $1.2 million [in the city]," she said.
“We had six or eight pre-auction offers so we could position the vendor for setting the reserve. They’d have been happy to sell at that, but with 22 registered bidders, about 12 of them active, it went to $982,000.”
The buyer, an investor who had previously focussed around Greenlane, was a first-time buyer on the Shore. Hellesloe said she had also seen a pick-up of agents from city offices bringing buyers over the bridge, both investors and owner occupiers.
"But we’ve also got local buyers who will pay more to stay in the area.”
