An oceanfront house in Omaha broke the beach suburb’s price record when it sold at auction last night for $8.32 million. The sale smashed a record set only three weeks ago for the exclusive suburb.
And Ray White agent Heather Walton, who marketed the four-bedroom cedar and shingle Hamptons-style house, said that breaking the $10m barrier could easily happen.
“If some of the big architectural properties close to the water went on the market, I could get $10m for them now.
“They’re not on the market, but when they do, I reckon we’re only two years away from getting that money. We’ve broken $8m for new-end of Omaha on the seaside, old-end on the seaside broke $7m, the estuary’s more than $6m, ‘one-backs’ [from the water] are over $5.5m and the golf course broke $4m.
Start your property search
“A lot of my buyers are from my Epsom branch, the cross-over is crazy, they’re all the same people.”
The design of the Inanga Lane house was based on the Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton movie “Something’s Gotta Give”. Photo / Supplied
“Buyers are a bit more decisive at this end of the market, they move quickly.”
Walton estimated there are at least six buyers looking for waterfront properties with $7m-plus budgets, and another 10 looking at ‘one-back’ properties. She said the speed of the auction turnaround on the 16-year-old house beside the sand dunes meant that another five or six buyers missed out, “this was really about the house, it was breathtaking.”
Ray White agent Heather Walton. Photo / Supplied
The auction started with the pre-auction offer of $8.2m, but the two bidders pushed the price to $8.32m, with the house going to the parties who made the early offer.
“It’s settlement before Christmas, they’ll be so happy.”
The records keep tumbling on Inanga Lane.
The sales prices for oceanfront homes on Inanga Lane have smashed three records since April, one just three weeks ago. Photo / Supplied
Last night’s sale comes just three weeks after Walton set a new record price of $7.75m for a waterfront property on the same street. The deal on the five-bedroom house on a 1296sqm site, which had a ratings valuation of $4m, was off-market. It, in turn, beat the April figure of $7.375m for another five-bedroom home, this one designed by the award-winning Leuschke Group Architects in 2009.
The house that sold last night, designed by architect John Durkin of Abri Architects, combined traditional Hamptons-style appeal, adapted for Omaha, and included a covered courtyard with an outdoor fire, a lofted double garage, and two suites on the top floor with fantastic views over the dunes to the ocean.
The classic Hamptons-style design has stood the test of time. Photo / Supplied
The owners earlier told OneRoof they briefed Durkin of their Hamptons movie reference.
“We told him that the best way to understand what we wanted was to watch the movie ‘Something’s Gotta Give’, with Jack Nicolson and Diane Keating, so he did, and he really got it.
“We absolutely loved every bit of John’s design, it was perfect and exactly what we’d dreamed of,” they said.
Walton admitted that quality properties often don’t make it to auction because demand is so high.
The Omaha beachfront property on Inanga Lane sold for a record $7.375m in April, now broken by two other sales. Photo / Supplied
“The vendor was certainly committed to seeing the campaign through, but the perfect offer came in early.”
In September, Walton also sold a property on Mangatawhiri Road less than eight hours after it was listed by a buyer who had not seen the house during lockdown. She could not divulge the price, but said it was well over the $3.5m the vendors paid for the five-bedroom, 411sqm architect-designed house on the golf course in January.
A house on Omaha Drive on the harbourside of the suburb set a non-oceanfront record last week of $6.35m. Photo / Supplied
And just last week a property on the harbourside of Omaha broke records for non-oceanfront when it sold for $6.35m. The four-bedroom home on Omaha Drive was on the market for the first time since it was built 20 years ago.
- additional reporting Louise Richardson
