Ted Ingram has no time for agents who shy away from auctions.
He has just come off one heck of a roll, calling auctions for 20 apartments for Ray White City Apartments in Auckland. Nine sold under the hammer, and deals were being struck for another to five to six properties. Sales prices ranged from just over $140,000 all the way up to $1.2 million.
A buzzy crowd of more than 100 people were in the room for the Apartment Collective - a grand event putting a large number of properties for sale in one place - and another 50 or 60 people were watching the action online.
Only two properties at the end of the day, both on lease hold land, did not attract starting bids.
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“Auctions are still the best way to sell a property,” Ingram says. “We’ve found the buyers, we’ve just proven that, and they’re cash unconditional.”
Opening the auction, he reminded the room that with keen vendors, good investment returns and low low interest rates, it was time to “buy as much as you can, borrow as much as you can.”
Director and sales manager of city apartments Daniel Horrobin reckoned it was the biggest crowd for some time, showed that the market is turning. Bringing 20 properties to auction in one marathon session (usually it's just six to eight on a day) was clearly a punt that paid off for the company.
“We’ve drawn the property investors back into the market,” he said. “They’ve sat tight for a while and now they’re ready to come back in. There were a few owner occupiers buying, but the investors are back.”
OneRoof talked to a few investors – all wanting to stay anonymous – who were only just coming back into the auction rooms. Many were there to watch and note what price points were settling, who else was bidding. Many seemed well known to agents and each other.
One had invested heavily from 2008 to 2012, buying eight apartments in a period when Auckland was only just becoming aware of the investment potential. She claimed smart business buying was about not letting emotions rule, but now that the heat was off the market, it was time to come in again. An experienced head next to me was shaking when Ingram announced a property as passing because prices didn’t meet vendor expectations – muttering that inexperienced owners were still not ready to accept the new market reality.
The fastest talking man in the city, Ingram had a speed of patter that sounded more like a race commentary. It wasn’t a surprise to find, then, that he’d spent his teenage years in horse racing before switching to real estate in the late 1990s. He was rivalled for laughs by a few of his agents calling out phone bids, but the roomful of bidders – and watchers – was pretty intense. There were as many women as men bidding, mostly well dressed and late middle aged by the looks.
With regular pauses in bidding to consult with vendors, Ingram had them “back on the bike and pedaling”.
One bidder was possibly ruing his luck in not following the auctioneer’s advice to “buy the one you want, not the one that’s left” when the second property in a block went for nearly double the price of the first one, earlier in the day.
A couple of couples came away beaming with what looked to be apartments for themselves. A very smart four bedroom, three bath flat in Birdwood Crescent, Parnell with a clever configuration over 200 sq m in three floors, a designer kitchen and a self-contained wing and a rental appraisal of $1300 to $1500 per week went for the day’s top price of $1.2 million.
Agent Krister Samuel’s Mega Mortgage Munching apartment, a six bedroom 136 sq m apartment in an attractive heritage corner building in the city end of Victoria Street got the most excitement, with late bidders coming in at the last moment to drive the price to $883,000. A delighted young woman, with phone pressed to her ear, snapped up a two bed apartment in the Statesman in Parliament Street for $785,000.
Ingram and Horrobin say that the big auction has helped them find the buyers, that they’ve proven auctions are alive and well in the city and – a smiling dig at media - gloomy prognostications can be put to rest. Tonight Ray White offices across major Australian cities will be bringing their Apartment Collective auctions to the hammer.
