A completely rebuilt house in Auckland’s desirable eastern bays sold at auction Thursday for $3.3 million, after only a week on the market.
Barfoot & Thompson agent Paul Neshausen, who with colleague Tina Barrell marketed the four-bedroom house on a 463sqm site on Long Drive, Saint Heliers, said the pre-auction offer came in just four days after the striking home went on the market and the auction was brought forward.
The sale price was a whopping $1.175m over CV.
“The first open home was crazy, it’s the busiest we’ve had all year even though it was a miserable rainy weekend. We probably had 40 groups look at it in those first few days. I tapped some buyers who I knew would be interested and they made the offer straight away. For something like this, it has to be a number that would finish the campaign,” Neshausen said, adding that two other bidders in the room couldn’t beat the $3.3m the buyers offered, so the hammer came down quickly.
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“The buyers had been looking for six months and couldn’t find anything. We called it a seven-year-old new home, it was low maintenance, had all the mod-cons but was also lock-up-and-leave.
“There’s nothing on the market like that, the timing was beautiful for our vendors, who are moving on to their beach house,” he said.
The Long Drive, Saint Heliers, house was luxuriously renovated seven years ago by its owner-builder. Photo / Supplied
The four-bedroom house was a complete re-build of the original house. Its owner usually does $10m houses in the area, so many of the finishes and design were of that calibre, Neshausen said.
“It was a really cool house, there’s nothing like that on the market, with features you’d normally find in a $10m house.”
However, sites billed as having development potential in the desirable eastern suburbs had mixed results in Barfoot & Thompson auction rooms earlier in the week.
A classic brick and tile 1930s home just blocks from the water on Polygon Road, Saint Heliers, sold under the hammer for $3.1m, but two others in the neighbouring blue-chip suburbs passed in.
The agent marketing the three-bedroom house in tidy original condition, Aaron Foss, of Barfoot & Thompson, made no bones of the fact the attraction of the three-bedroom home was in its 809sqm site, zoned for urban density. It was on the market for the first time in 84 years, he said, and had a CV of $4.05m – $4m of that in the land.
It was pitched as an “incredible prospect in the Bay”, and a “golden opportunity for investors and developers”. Foss’ marketing said that the original property might even work as a renovation, a luxurious family estate or a multi-unit development.
An original house on 809sqm of land zoned for urban density on Polygon Road, Saint Heliers, sold for $3.1m. Photo / Supplied
Bidding on the property began at $2m and quickly shot up to $2.84m before the auction was paused for negotiation. A minute later it was back on at $3.05m, went up to $3.1m before the property was declared on the market and the hammer came down.
Foss said interest in property was a bit of an unknown, but with two bidders on the day, the house sold. He could not disclose details of the eventual buyers.
The two other properties in neighbouring Glendowie and Orakei in the same auction, passed in and are now back on the market for price by negotiation.
A run-down three-bedroom 1950s house on 809sqm zoned for suburban density at 45 Chelmsford Avenue, Glendowie, had a single bid of $1.3m, pushed up to $1.6m after negotiation.
It had a CV of $2.625m and records show it had last changed hands in 2015 for $1.4m.
Another 1950s four-bedroom concrete and tile house on 9 Sudeley Street, Orakei, which had a CV of $3.5m, passed in with no bids.
A four-bedroom house on West End Road, Westmere, fetched $3.03m, just over its $3m CV. Photo / Supplied
With an 822sqm site zoned for urban density, it was billed by Foss as “a canvas for a visionary developer or an astute investor” and pointing to its elevated views of the city and bridge and exceptional location near the Coates Avenue shops. Records show it last changed hands 12 years ago for $1.19m.
Barfoot & Thompson auctioneer Murray Smith said results for the busiest week this year were still mixed.
“It’s got that patchy recovery vibe. We see some great places going really well, and then others you go ‘now why didn’t that sell?’
“We’ve still got owners with high expectations, sometimes they bought at the peak, sometimes they’ve got high debt and need to get out of that.
Buyers paid $3.95m for a renovated four-bedroom transitional villa on Kelvin Road, Remuera. Photo / Supplied
“But owners can’t straight off expect to get massive amounts. The bidding’s not going to go crazy. There’s a bit more action in the market, but you get what the market thinks [it is worth].”
Barfoot & Thompsons operations manager Vaughan Borcovsky said that the company’s auction numbers since August were showing a pickup in confidence.
“October and November volumes are three times what they were in January to July, when we were averaging 250 auctions. We had 741 in October and will have excess of that for November.”
He said that the company’s auction success rate, which is measured as a sale within 90 days of the start of an auction campaign, is sitting at 74% over the past three months. In the same three months, properties brought to auction are selling within 32 days (compared to 44 days for non-auction listings).
“There’s an increase in confidence of going to auction. Last month in excess of 65% of listings were for auction, and even more this month. That’s trending up since August, we expect closer to 70% now.”
Borcovsky added that indications from agents bringing on new listings for the new year suggest that January and February 2024 will be higher than the start of this year.
In Bayleys’ auction rooms a four-bedroom home on Kelvin Road, Remuera, fetched $3.95m. The renovated villa, marketed by Carolyn Ryan, was outside double grammar zone but included luxury marble finishes and a roomy 1310sqm section. It had a CV of $2.425m, and records show it last sold in 2017, pre-renovation, for $1.9m.
On West End Road, Westmere, a four-bedroom home marketed by Blair Haddow fetched $3.03m, just over its $3m CV. The house, on 556sqm of land with sea views from the upper levels and room to add a pool, had last sold five years ago for $1.93m.
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