Harcourts Auckland agent Diego Traglia has two surprises in store for Kiwis.
The first is that he is back for season two of the hit reality real estate show Rich Listers, after earlier ruling himself out for a return.
The second is that he's heading back to TV screens just as the market is picking up.
Traglia told OneRoof this week that he had already started filming on season two of Rich Listers. This time around, he's getting a chance to show his own Auckland listings, instead of jet-setting to Waiheke Island or Queenstown.
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He told OneRoof that at the top end of his market, buyers were comparing prices all across Auckland. A designer house on 6 William Blake Drive, on the water at Riverhead that Traglia earlier dubbed the best listing of his career has had plenty of offers, but no takers.
“There are places around here selling for $3m and well over. People in this segment have the money, and there’s no other property on the water," he said.
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Traglia had noticed a sudden shift in the market that in the last couple of weeks. "Just before King’s Birthday weekend the switch just happened,” he said.
“We sold 14 properties in the last eight days, have 18 under contract. Some of them are multi-offer, we’ve doubled the number of buyers through open homes, we’ve sold off-market, we’ve had three bidders at auction.
“It’s just come from nowhere.”
While it’s too early to say which buyer group is driving the up-swing, Traglia is seeing a lot more speculators, investors and developers back in the market.
“They see [the market] is at the bottom, they’ve been dormant for the past year and a half. First-home buyers realise we’re at the bottom of the market, but we’ve actually passed the bottom – that was two weeks ago.”
Traglia said that buyers were missing out, as houses were now getting multiple offers, and no longer had the luxury of time to make decisions, particularly at the entry level of $850,000 to mid-$1.15 million range in his northwest Auckland patch.
A house on Accolage Boulevard, in north west Auckland’s Kumeu sold for $1m after just four weeks on the market. Photo / Supplied
In Kumeu, which has been extremely slow all year, Traglia said he sold a four-bedroom starter house on Accolage Boulevard for $1m after only four weeks on the market.
“On the most popular properties, I’m getting 10 offers. It’s not at the level of 2020 as the market was heating up after that first Covid lockdown and we got 31 offers, but you can see the start of the same market timing now.”
He added that houses that had struggled to sell were finding buyers at price points similar to earlier in the year.
A near-new five-bedroom house on McCaw Avenue, Whenuapai, sold last week for $1.35m after failing to find a buyer at auction in February, the asking price dropping from $1.495m to $1.45m and a conditional deal falling over when the buyer couldn’t sell their old place. Four years ago, as a new house, it had changed hands for $1.19m.
“Now these media stories on the activity change will be gasoline on the fire, they will bring the price up. The media helps dampen down when there’s a slowdown, and will help when it’s turned now,” he said.
Traglia noted that auctions were at about 30% to 35% clearance rates in the region, adding that he’ll bring a bigger share of properties to auction in the coming weeks.
A near-new house on McCaw Avenue, Whenuapai, sold for $1.35m. Photo / Supplied
Developers are back.
A six-bedroom 1960s house on 749sqm site in Ash Street, Avondale, had three developers competing at auction before it sold afterwards for $1.35m. The property, which was zoned for urban density, had a CV of $1.75m.
While this vendor had held the property for over 20 years, Traglia said there were developers who bought at the peak of market who were now holding on – just.
“I’ve seen a lot of people in a lot of hurt, they’re on hold because they know they bought at $2500 per sqm in Massey [in the peak] and now it’s worth $1100 to $1000.
“I’m saying ‘don’t sell’ because the market will pick up. They can’t sell land and be down hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Traglia said.
Rich Listers is set to air later this year.
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