A real estate boss who promised to consider any offer above $1 on a three-bedroom South Auckland home he wanted rid of has been swamped with offers – including one for $6.
Ray White Manukau co-owner Tom Rawson admitted he got exactly what he asked for when he advertised the renovated three-bedroom, one-bathroom property in Manurewa as a “chance to buy for $1”.
The deadline for the sale closed last Friday and he waded through more than 20 offers to find the best offer for the home on Myers Road. He eventually landed on one and accepted a figure close to what he wanted.
Rawson, who owned the property with his business partner on the development project, could not disclose the exact sale price until after settlement. However, he confirmed the sale price was near the $740,000 price tag he had previously sold the front house in his small two-house development on Myers Road for.
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Offers were made from a mix of buyers ranging from first-home buyers, investors, property traders and flippers.
Along with some lowball offers, he also got approached by someone wanting to be vendor-financed for 30 years at half the current interest rate and “everything in between”.
“It was like $6, $5000, $50,000, $150,000, $300,000, $450,000, $480,000, $600,000, $650,000 and then offers higher than that ...”
The home had not been lived in since the renovation was finished more than seven months ago. Photo / Supplied
Ray White Manukau co-owner Tom Rawson had no regrets about offering the house for sale by deadline sale with a $1 reserve. Photo / Fiona Goodall
Rawson had opted to sell with a set sale date instead of an auction to make it easier for a first-home buyer to buy, especially if they needed to make a conditional offer. He told OneRoof he was 99% confident this was who would be moving in.
“I’m delighted a homeowner will be moving into it in the coming months.”
He was happy with how the process went because he sold the house within two weeks, which was a third of the average time properties on the market took to sell by any method other than auction. An unexpected bonus was that people who didn’t think they could afford a house had shown interest and ended up speaking with a mortgage broker and were a step closer to home ownership, he added.
However, it wasn’t all good news as Rawson had still taken a massive hit on the development project overall, which had cost him a total of $2.35m including the $1.332m he paid for the undeveloped property back in 2021.
The pair had sold it in 2022 only for the deal to collapse when the buyer failed to settle. They then subdivided the property and put a second house at the rear of the section to minimise their loss.
“It was well below a number that would have made us a profit on the property or we would have even broken even on – we were well below that – but we knew that entering into the process anyway.”
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