Eight bidders push price of two-bed brick and tile home to $1.255m

A first-home buyer snaffling a 1970s two-bedroom house from seven others bidders was one of the year’s first auction successes.

The Bayleys agent, Victoria Turner, who marketed the brick house on Summit Drive in Auckland’s Mount Albert, said a mid-December start to the campaign for a mid-January auction hadn’t put people off. It sold, after speedy bidding, for $1.255 million.

“We had 65 or 70 people through the house, all sorts of demographics from retirees and downsizers to small families and first-home buyers. Our buyer had been looking for 18 months,” she said of the tidy and newly-roofed house with scope for renovation on a 427sqm site.

Turner said she’s often marketed properties across the holiday period, with great success.

“I love this time of year. As soon as Christmas Day is done, buyers are getting into the new year and want to start with a big bang,” she said.

“The auction process allows people to get on with it, and there are plenty of finance people, brokers and banks that will work for you over this period.”

Turner added that in this market she uses auctions to let the market set the price.

A house on Lebanon Drive, The Gardens in South Auckland sold for $900,000 after 16 bidders competed in the late December auction. Photo / Supplied

“I don’t even go near guessing, I tell vendors exactly the feedback from buyers, it’s all about the market.”

Another property, a smart new-build Hamptons-style four-bedroom house on 31 Montrose Street, Point Chevalier, passed in at auction and has since sold.

Bayleys national auction manager Conor Patton, who called the two auctions for Turner this week on Wednesday, said that the number of auction campaigns across the country for later in January and early February were at the usual levels for this time of year.

“Canterbury held up for longer at the end of last year, more so than other regions. We have some big auction days booked and Queenstown has 16 or 17 booked for February 3 – a combination of holiday homes and permanents, a good mix of buyers. And in Blenheim, where the target is holiday people, we start earlier in the year.”

Harcourts Cooper & Co auctioneer Andrew North, whose agency covers the North Shore to Warkworth, said the close of last year was a total contrast to December the year before.

“2021 we were flying along and struggling with capacity. When the market started to change this year [2022], clearance rates dropped below 80% to 60%, the first sign of this change. This December was really in line with that,” North said.

“After that carpe diem, spend up large, don’t worry about the future [thinking] from Covid, the party will have come to an end.”

The crucial thing agents discovered, he said, was that while general auction clearance rates hovered around 40% to 50%, when there was at least one cash bidder clearance rates shot up to 70% or 80%.

“This year people will be genuinely selling if they need to, maybe as a result of interest rate pressure, maybe some looking to downsize, there could be some mortgagee sales.

A brand-new, four-bedroom house on 31 Montrose Street in Auckland's Point Chevalier passed in at auction and is now under negotiation. Photo / Supplied

North sees agents have a good pipeline of people waiting to start marketing their properties in February after the two long weekends.

In Barfoot & Thompson’s first auctions of the year, a four-bedroom home on West Coast Road, Glen Eden, that agents Kelly Zhang and Christine Wang billed as having potential to re-fresh and modernise, sold under the hammer for $967,800, while other lots passed in. It had a June 2020 CV of $1.1m.

Barfoot & Thompson auctioneer Marian Tolich said that towards the end of last year, some sellers who hoped to cash out for a higher price decided not to sell.

“I did a couple where people were moving and wanted their nest egg for their retirement. Others see it as a good time to upgrade and move to a better suburb, so are prepared to take the market price.”

Tolich said she was looking forward to a positive year, with people coming back after Christmas ready to sell – and buy.

“There are some good buys for first-home buyers, unbelievable. People will adjust [to the new interest rates], they always adjust. There are cash buyers out there for people prepared to take the market price.”

Ray White auctioneer Sam Steele said that in his part of Auckland, he is seeing an earlier start to auction listings.

“Last year was tougher, but people have worked through it. Probably the bad weather helped people get on to listing [their properties] earlier.

“We’re pleasantly surprised, this time last year was a shift away from the 2021 boom; this year it's more than I’ve ever done in my career. Usually we do about 10 auctions in January, this year we’re looking at 30 or 40, with the same numbers for February,” Steele said.

Steele said that agents who had moved away from auctions earlier last year quickly realised that they were the best way to go, particularly in South Auckland where the changes were first to hit.

“A well-presented, desirable location it still going to be extremely popular. Educated owners on market value will get it, not chase prices from the year before. Although there are still people out there that nothing’s going to change their mind.

“The sooner we sell, the more money in their pockets. Once the market finds the bottom, our experience shows that it will stay bottomed out – last time it went from end of 2016 to early 2019.

“This year we’ll see the market going back to normal, people have forgotten what that’s like. It’s still positive but not going up $100,000 a quarter.”

Steele said the year finished with a standout auction for a property on Mt Lebanon Crescent, in Manukau’s The Gardens which sold for $900,000. The tidy brick and tile three-bedroom home on a 410sqm section near the Botanic Gardens, marketed by Monika Maynard and Aryaan Batra, had 16 bidders and “absolutely flew”, Steele said. It had a CV of $1.175m.