On Auckland's North Shore, one agent has sold more than $85 million worth of property so far this year. $36m of that was in July - traditionally one of the worst months in real estate.
Precision Real Estate agent Andrew Dorreen told OneRoof the July sales included two waterfront homes on Lake View Road, in Takapuna. One sold for more than $10m, the other got just under $9m. The $10m-plus sale is a suburb record for the year, and may be hard to beat.
Dorreen said: “Four of those July sales were large waterfront properties. Two were on Lake View Road, in Takapuna. The $10m-plus one had a CV of $6.55m, but CVs are not always accurate. There was also an off-market deal on Seacliffe Avenue, Belmont, for mid-$7m, plus a couple of other sales, which made up the $36m."
Those sales follow the $7.35m paid for a classic villa on the beach at Cheltenham Road, in Cheltenham, in March.
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“Waterfront is starting to move and there’s quite a lot available,” Dorreen said.
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He declined to reveal who his buyers were but did say both locals and expats had been active in the market.
“There are a lot of people who look at special properties and miss out, so when one of my vendors is looking to go to market, we introduce them to buyers before the house hits the market," he said.
“Probably 20 to 30% of the sales I do annually are done that way.”
Dorreen said the waterfront property on Cheltenham Road had had multiple offers before selling to a buyer moving across the bridge from the cityside.
Such a switch was not uncommon for waterfront places, he said, adding that Cheltenham beats Takapuna for a lot of city-siders.
Dorreen said he was already seeing a spring lift. “There’s momentum now that we know the OCR trend. If we go back two months, we were staring down the barrel of waiting until September 2025, which would strain an already constricted economy and real estate market. Now it’s trending in the right direction.
“While you can’t pick the bottom of the market, I think it would be pretty safe to say that it is going to get better from here on in. Astute people with their eye on the economy and their own businesses would be saying, ‘If we buy something now, in a year’s time that property is definitely going to be worth more.’"
A second house on Lake View Road, Takapuna, sold for the well over $8m, says agent Andrew Dorreen. Photo / Supplied
A villa on Cheltenham beach, Devonport, sold for $7.35m in March. Photo / Supplied
Dorreen has seven beachfront properties for sale, along with another with lake access.
Later this month he will be bringing more waterfront properties to market as well as a “beautiful one” on Takapuna beach in October, but he said it was too soon to share details.
Currently available is a four-bedroom clifftop property on a 1391sqm site at 52 Seacliffe Avenue, Belmont, which he expects to fetch early to mid-$5m (it has a CV of $5.7m).
Dorreen also has two properties available on Milford beach, a pair of adjoining houses on 15 Craig Road and a four-bedroom Lawrence Sumich-designed place on 3A Holiday Road.
The Craig Road pair, one with five bedrooms and the other with three, has already had three offers after less than a month, the agent said. He said the 1000sqm section, the only one on the beach with two titles, would go for circa $9m.
He is pitching the Holiday Road house as a substantial renovation or re-clad project (the cladding is non-cavity plaster).
“It’s somewhere you could live while you made plans for the future,” he said.
It is not the only property he is marketing where buyers are likely to put another house on the desirable pieces of land.
A pair of houses at 15 Craig Road, Milford with a rare two titles has had multiple offers after only a month on the market. Photo / Supplied
A four-bedroom clifftop house at 52 Seacliffe Road, in Belmont, comes with building and geotech reports. Photo / Supplied
One is the controversial clifftop site of 1072sqm at 9 Kitchener Road, Takapuna, still on the market after it failed to sell at tender in May. It may take some bravery on the part of the buyer as the property abuts the coastal walkway between Takapuna and Milford where earlier this year the owners ended up blocking the public’s access across their land. The estate of the original owner had given up after six years of talks trying to get Auckland Council to drop the heritage A restriction placed on the old cottage in exchange for taking on a slice of land to reinstate the public walkway.
In Cheltenham, Dorreen is calling another pair of 1980s houses in two titles on 1219sqm at 30 Oxford Terrace, which require remedial work or full replacement, as an “unheard of” blank canvas on the beach. He points to the land component of the CV of $8.75m in his advertising as a price guide for the houses that have been on the market for 18 months.
Further up the coast, Dorreen makes no bones in his advertising about the issues surrounding a beachfront 1980s property on 320sqm at 1/9 The Esplanade, Castor Bay. He said the water ingress issues “will either require extensive remedial works or the complete removal of the existing home”. He told OneRoof buying at that price (its CV is $4.475m) would be considered entry level for beachfront on the Shore.
Behind it, number 9A The Esplanade boasts a new kitchen and a building report to reassure buyers about its cavity plaster system. Dorreen said in his advertising that his vendors have secured their next move and are prepared to consider all serious offers, including an extended settlement period.
He said many vendors were prepared to do deals with keen buyers, including accepting longer settlement times of six or even 12 months.
“If they could buy something unconditionally and then settle in six or 12 months, they’re going to get some market uplift without committing their money in a high interest rate environment. Instead of borrowing money for a $10m purchase which is potentially going to cost $600,000, then hold off settlement that makes it quite attractive,” he said.
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