Real estate agents have been door-knocking in the wealthy Auckland suburb of Parnell offering eight-figure sums but coming away empty handed.
Ray White agent Ross Hawkins told OneRoof that homeowners in Parnell aren't budging.
“Last year I approached people with $20m-plus offers on their houses from genuine buyers and they said they were not prepared to let their homes go for that," he said.
“They were saying, ‘Where do I go? How do I replace this?’
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“In the quadrant around St Stephens Avenue, those people don’t want to go back to Remuera. They might consider Herne Bay or St Marys Bay, which have the cafes and similar heritage houses, but really they want to stay in Parnell where the shops are just up the street.”
Hawkins estimated at most there would be 100 homes in the suburb worth over $10m but he’d have “a couple of handfuls of buyers for those homes, if they could.”
He added there are few high-end apartment blocks in the suburb to entice downsizers out of their homes, but they are rare.
The penthouse of the Edition apartment block which sold for a record $9.85m four years ago would now likely fetch more than $10m. Photo / Supplied
He added there are few high-end apartment blocks in the suburb to entice downsizers out of their homes, but they are rare.
Enquiries for the up-scale Edition, where he is marketing a sub-penthouse for mid-$6m and half floor apartments for $5.65m, have picked up and he estimated the penthouse, which set a record for apartment prices when it sold off the plans in 2018 for $9.25m would now fetch more than $10m because of demand.
But most homeowners would rather hang on to their properties.
OneRoof figures show that the only $20m plus sale in recent times was the St Stephens Avenue home of former Prime Minister Sir John Key, which changed hands for $23m over four years ago.
And that was the last big sale in the street, records show, with many properties with ratings valuations over $10m last changing hands 10 or 20 years ago or more.
Only three other $10m-plus properties have sold recently in Parnell – two St Stephens Avenue estates in 2015 and 2016 and a four-bedroom house on Taurarua Street last year - well below the number of $10m-plus sales in Remuera or Herne Bay in the past year.
The $23m paid for Sir John Key's home in St Stephens Avenue in 2017 was the last sale over $20m in Parnell. Photo / Supplied
It comes as the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand reports that 286 properties around the country sold for over $5m last year – nearly double the number sold in 2020.
Most of those were in Auckland (248), with 16 $5m plus sales in Otago (mostly Queenstown), nine in the Bay of Plenty region, five in Canterbury, four in Waikato and two each in Northland and Wellington.
Across the country, 1516 homes sold for over $3m (up 82% on last year) and there were just under 31,000 $1m-plus sales, up from 18,260 the year before.
Bayleys agent David Rainbow said that – if they could be persuaded – there could be several properties in the suburb that could fetch $20m “and I’ve had buyers for them.
“But they don’t need to sell financially, they’ve got no or minimal debt on them, but more importantly, they’ve got nowhere else to go.”
Bayleys’ Fleur Denning, who has made a string of high-profile sales, concurred.
A 1518sqm development site in Saint Georges Bay Road which sold for $7.2m in February last year is back on the market with consents for five houses. Photo / Supplied
“The demand at the upper end is extraordinary, but those vendors won’t budge. You can have long periods with no [top end] sales. When there are, it’s often a domino, with three or more parties in a chain of buying and selling.”
Denning added that the strict heritage rules in the Victorian-era suburb mean that buildings can’t be bowled and land is scarce.
A 1518 sqm site on Saint George’s Bay Road, billed for development, that sold last year for $7.2m is back on the market for a February auction. Ray White agents Kay Yoo and Ian Choi said the double grammar zone property, which currently has a three-bedroom 1890s villa on it, already has resource consent for five 300 sqm stand-alone houses.
One of last year’s most expensive homes in the suburb, an original 1950s house on Judges Road on a 1,004 sqm waterfront site that went for $7.8m after nearly two years on the market, will be bowled for a new home.
“Developers are still active, but again, they just can’t get the sites. Buyers who were circulating at the end of last year who didn’t secure a place are still looking, and now there’s a whole lot more coming,” Denning said.
She said that sellers in the suburb still want the security of having bought a new place before they’re prepared to sell, but are facing a shortage of quality small options.
“Smaller renovated villas are selling well as an apartment alternative. People like them because they can have their pets, there’s no body corporate.”
