Nineteen bidders, most of them first home buyers, drove the price of a three-bedroom brick and tile property in east Auckland to $1.075 million - $205,000 above its CV.
The 12-year-old house at 55 Caen Road, in Panmure, had attracted 168 groups through open homes before it went to auction on Wednesday.
READ MORE: Find out if your suburb is rising or falling
The Ray White agent marketing the property, Rain Diao, said the new owners had been looking for a couple of months before the first lockdown in March and had missed out at two earlier auctions, so were relieved to finally have a home.
Start your property search
But listings in the first home price bracket are hard to come by, says Diao: "My next job is to find another 18 homes for those other bidders.”
Ray White Mission Bay CEO Wayne Maguire, who called the auction, says buyer demand is high right now. “A big auction would be 10 people; this is twice as many as that. There’s strong competition,” he says.
“At alert level three I have to personally register and clear buyers before they view properties. In the first week [since lockdown began] we’ve already had 190 buyers.”
Another Panmure property at 94A Tripoli Road also attracted huge interest, selling at a Barfoot and Thompson auction this week for $903,000 - $163,000 above CV.
This time there were 11 registered bidders from the more than 70 buyer groups that had viewed the home. Sales agent Aaron Foss, who marketed the home, said: “Most of the feedback had been for the early $800,000s, but this was a good first home buy as it had a garage and a sleepout and showed the benefit of staging.”
94A Tripoli Road, in Panmure, Auckland, sold for $903,000 at auction this week. Photo / Supplied
On the North Shore, Harcourts agent David Ding said buyer activity in Glenfield and surrounding suburbs had spiked. “This is where people come to start due to affordability.
“My area is 60 to 70 percent first home buyers and I have never seen this. It’s the highest it’s been in 13 years, much more than in the 2016 peak.”
At a recent auction for a smartly renovated three-bed home at 1/1 Trias Road, in Totara Vale, Ding had five buyers making bids, with the house eventually fetching $974,000, well above the reserve of $800,000 and CV of $860,000.
The new owner, Ding said, had been looking for over six months, had been gutted to miss out on four other auctions and “so on the day, he never gave up, he had his hand in the air”.
Five bidders tried to secure this renovated home at 1/1 Trias Road, in Totara Vale. Photo / Supplied
Ding says 12 months ago this house and others like it in the area would have got about $850,000, but prices started climbing at the start of the year and haven’t paused for breath. “Then after lockdown there was another push, because of low interest rates, to $950,000. It has a domino effect; people see others have bought and they want in.”
Ding said that competition was even tougher for starter homes on bigger sections, with first home buyers often bidding against developers who plan to subdivide.
Just before lockdown, Ding had more than 150 groups inspect 109 Weldene Avenue, in Glenfield, a typical 1960s home on about 711sqm of land.
“There were over 20 bidders,” he said. The property sold under the hammer for $1.09 million, well above its CV of $840,000.
Ding said stock levels for the Shore normally sit at around 1600 but are now at 1100. “We need at least another 500 houses to sell.”
John Bolton, owner of Squirrel Mortgages, said that the while market was “crazy out there”, property was driven by confidence “and that can change”.
“There’s a fear of missing out, but that might flip the other way. House prices are strong, but we’re only one crisis away from getting nervous again. It is a volatile world and we will see ups and downs.”
He said that the return of small-scale developers would bring more housing to the market, alleviating the housing shortage that is driving up prices.
