The founders of boutique supermarket Farro Fresh have sold their six-bedroom luxury home in Auckland's Remuera.
Bayleys agents Gary and Vicki Wallace closed the deal on the Bassett Road property last week and while they were unable to disclose the exact sale price, they said it was substantially over the property’s CV of $7.7 million, and above $8m.
The luxury home hit the market in January after Farro founders James and Janene Draper made the decision to quit Auckland and move to Central Otago. The couple had bought the luxury home more than a decade ago for $4.45 million.
Gary Wallace told OneRoof that the buyers were locals who had been looking for the perfect home for around six months. They had even looked at other properties the Wallaces were marketing.
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He said they were drawn to the quality of the 585sqm home, which includes a stylish kitchen featuring Gaggenau and Wolf appliances complete with an oversized scullery/prep kitchen that was used for many years as the Farro test kitchen and for food video shoots, an outdoor dining room, media room and gym. The 1066sqm section included a pool in stylishly landscaped grounds.
The entertainer's kitchen was used by the Farro Fresh founders for recipe testing and food video shoots. Photo / Supplied
The house had multiple outdoor entertaining spaces. Photo / Supplied
“The quality and scale of the property ticked all their boxes. These people were shopping around, I think they were looking at properties other agents put in front of them,” Wallace said.
“They kept coming back to this house because of the quality and the potential value.”
He added: “The Drapers are beautiful people and their home resonated. When you meet James and Janene they’re really the sort of people you’re happy to sit down and spend time with and so going into their home just evoked all that feel. Which is lovely.”
Wallace said getting buyers to commit in the current market required top agents to use all their skills to get them across the line.
Janene Draper at her Farro Fresh store at Mt Wellington in 2011. Photo / Brett Phibbs
“From an agent perspective, when you do get a buyer who is looking to buy, you want to hang on to them because they have so much choice,” he told OneRoof.
The agent revealed that he had along with wife Vicki and sons Sam and Andrew recently sold some “fantastic properties” for $2m to $10m. He said that the increase in stock numbers meant there were fewer buyers looking at each listing.
“The numbers are limited. So normally when we might have five or six buyers on a property, now it’s coming down to one or two or possibly three," he said.
In March, a house in Ridings Road, Remuera, sold in less than a month for over $9m. Photo / Supplied
An Italian-style house in Lucerne Road sold for $9m in December last year. Photo / Supplied
“You’ve got to stay close to buyers because they’ve got so much choice. When they put their hand up and say I’ve got potentially X amount to spend, this is what I’m looking for’, you want to wrap them up in cotton wool to try to please them."
Wallace saw his job as keeping buyers focused on the properties he was listing. “It’s easy for buyers to get distracted, so to be an effective agent for your vendor, you've got to work really, really hard to keep them focused. Otherwise, they’ve got other agents trying to promote and push their properties.”
In March, the Wallaces sold a place on Ridings Road for more than $9m after less than a month on the market. Again, while he cannot disclose the exact price, Wallace said the five-bedroom 556sqm home with a swimming pool on a 1096sqm site had five buyers competing for it.
It had a CV of $8.4m, and Wallace said the four buyers who missed out were still actively looking for homes in that price bracket.
It follows the December sale of another five-bedroom modern place on a 1033sqm site on Ridings Road for $8.3m, well over its CV of $8m. Only two years earlier the house had sold for $7.52m.
Also in December the Wallaces fetched $9m for a classical Italian-style four-bedroom 564sqm house on Lucerne Road after it had been on the market for less than a month. It did not have a pool, but it did have uninterrupted views across Orakei Basin and had a CV of $8.8m.
“So the market out there at the end of the day it’s not all doom and gloom. We are still transacting," Wallace said.
“It just comes down to the quality of the property that you’re selling. And, I think, the quality of the service that you provide your vendor and your purchaser.”
- Click here to find more properties for sale in Remuera
