Over 80 inspections, a pre-auction offer and nine registered bidders for the auction of a smart North Shore home is a sign of a returning market, say local agents.
Harcourts auctioneer Andrew North, who called the auction on the four-bedroom, three-bathroom home on a 604sqm section on Law Street in Torbay last week, said a pre-auction offer had been rare all throughout last year’s slowing market, so this property stood out.
The house sold for $1.566 million – $81,000 more than the pre-auction offer – with five bidders driving the price up, said Harcourts agent Ming Liu, who marketed the property with Harry Zheng.
“This is what happens when you have a very motivated vendor. The owners had been in the house eight or 10 years and were looking to downsize. Motivation is very important,” Liu said.
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She said buyers had been expecting to pay $1.3m to $1.4m.
“Nobody told us $1.5m, but there were three strong bidders going up in bids of $1000 and $500.”
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However, Liu admitted the house was an exceptional buy in the area, with four bedrooms and excellent presentation. She had also spent four months working with the owners to help them understand where the market was at as they bought their new downsizer and marketed their Torbay house.
“Helping people decide, giving them enough confidence, it’s all hard work in the background,” she said, adding that a motivated seller who understood that their house would not get the $1.6m or $1.7m of the peak of the market helped. She said the surprising fact was how many potential buyers were actually first-home buyers looking in this price bracket, a sign, she said, of high rents in the North Shore.
A four-bedroom house on Jutland Street, Mairangi Bay, sold for $1.26m, slightly more than its CV, in late April. Photo / Supplied
A neighbouring house on Jutland Street, Mairangi Bay, fetched $1.07m a month later. Photo / Supplied
North added: “These results only happen with an auction, never with any other method. It’s not across the board, it’s still a bit of a unicorn, but [an auction] is an insurance policy.”
Martin Cooper, whose Harcourts Cooper & Co covers all of the North Shore, said that auction rooms were feeling busier, helped by last week’s OCR announcement signaling the peak of the interest rates cycle.
“It reinforced that the tides are truly turning. No doubt in future years, people will be saying ‘I wish I had purchased in 2023’,” he said.
Cooper said that agents were reporting increasing numbers of people through open homes with first-home buyers leading the charge.
“The circle of activity is increasing. There is a feeling in the market that interest rates have peaked and house prices have reached the bottom, so it's time to secure a home,” he said, adding that one agent had sold 10 properties in three weeks, while another had closed three deals in one week.
Bayleys agent Thérèse Leslie said her six sales in six weeks, while not quite up to 2021 levels, were the best she’d seen for a while. Five of those properties sold at auction, a strike rate she did not have this time last year.
The four–bedroom house on Houston Place, Bayview, sold in 13 days after four offers. Photo / Supplied
A four-bedroom house on Manuwai Road, Torbay, sold at auction for $1.41m. Photo / Supplied
“People are making decisions: buyers are ready to buy and vendors are in the right place, price-wise. They understand they won’t sell at the [price] heights, but people are wanting to move,” she said.
At the end of April, a smartly renovated three-bedroom 1960s house she listed on Jutland Street, Mairangi Bay, sold for $1.26m after a pre-auction offer brought it forward and seven bidders competed. Its CV was $1.25m and over 55 people viewed it at open homes. A month later, the next door three-bedroom 1990s house in a more original condition fetched $1.07m.
“A couple of years ago, we would have sold the Jutland Street properties as a pair for development, now they’re selling separately to families,” Leslie said.
And although there was only one bidder for a smart four-bedroom house with sea views on Manuwai Road, Torbay, that Leslie listed, it sold for $1.41m – $100,000 above its CV and $215,000 more than the price it last sold for in 2019.
“There’s a little bit of confidence returning. But people are more likely to have sold their house, get a long settlement of three to four months [compared to four to six weeks] and go shopping with cash.
“It’s a long time since we’ve seen that, and they’re in a better position to secure something at auction.”
The difference, she said, is that buyers are people looking for their own family homes – not developers.
She said that not all properties were moving fast, and that vendors who did not accept the market price or present their homes well were seeing their properties languish in the market.
Ray White agent Kris Cunningham said a lack of stock on the North Shore was good news from a vendor’s perspective.
“Prices are still down, the volume of new listings stock is still down. But from a seller’s point of view we’re finding it quite good – more buyers, and more demand,” he said, pointing to a four-bedroom cross-lease home in Hillcrest he listed this month that had seven offers and sold in 15 days.
“It was well-priced, a good opportunity. The vendors are realistic about price, they presented it well and they got a good result.”
Another four-bedroom 1970s house on Houston Place, Bayview, sold after 13 days, when 30 groups viewed the house and four buyers made offers before it sold for $1.05m – it had a CV of $1.365m, OneRoof records show.
“Prices are good, they’re not premium amazing prices, that was at the peak. We’re miles off the peak, probably 20% now. A place that went for $1.2m would be early $900,000 now.”
Cunningham said he’s not seeing distressed sellers, and, while there are bargain hunters, there are enough realistic buyers to make good offers that are accepted. He said for his last 14 sales, the properties had an average of just 19 days on the market and five offers per property.
“Last year, we had half the groups through and nobody made offers, they were concerned about the market, prices dropping, interest rates. Now there’s a consensus that the market has moved.
“But there’s no room for error for the vendors on presentation or price, nor the agent’s marketing and where you’re pitching. Anything wrong, a property sits.
“We’re not out of the woods yet.”
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