The owners of a family home in Fendalton, in Christchurch, were brought to tears after their property of almost 20 years sold under the hammer for at least $100,000 more than what they were expecting.
Bidding for the four-bedroom, two-bathroom Bryndwr Road home opened at $900,000, it was announced on the market at $1.21 million, and eventually sold for $1.335m after 30 bids were placed at the Harcourts Grenadier auction on Thursday.
Harcourts Grenadier salesperson Sean Innes said there were five groups actively bidding until it reached about $1.2m when a substantial bid was made quickly pushing the price up to $1.3m.
“It just blew everybody else away and left two people.”
Start your property search
Innes said the vendors were “ecstatic” with the result. “Tears and hugs – all that sort of stuff.”
The property last changed hands in 2004 for $405,000, OneRoof property records show.
Innes said being zoned for the “big three” – Christchurch Boys’ High School, Christchurch Girls’ High School, and Burnside High School – was the major drawcard for the five local families bidding on it.
Read more:
- 'It was a swarm': 44 bids for a $742K leaky home, 80 bids for a South Auckland bungalow
- The '$2m' Grey Lynn dump sells for half the price
- How much does it cost to buy a house in Canterbury?
“They are already living here, and their kids are getting to that age where they need to get school zones sorted out either this year or next, so they are starting now,” he said.
“It’s back to that old chestnut – location, location, location. It’s a good location – it's not true blue-chip Fendalton, it’s on the verge. The true Fendalton is $1.6m and above sort of thing.”
The sale price of $1.335m was probably in the slightly lower to mid-price range for Fendalton, he added.
“It’s a real sweet spot for budget.”
The average property value in Fendalton is $1.496m, down 17.3% year-on-year, according to OneRoof-Valocity data.
Innes said there continued to be strong demand for family homes in Fendalton in that price range and a similar property for sale on the same street a month ago had also attracted a lot of interest.
“That agent told me that they had 100 groups to their open home, and I thought ‘how am I going to compete with that’, and lo and behold we had 120.”
A luxury home on Helmores Lane in Fendalton was the most expensive property to sell under the hammer in Christchurch last year. Photo / Supplied
While all the people bidding on the Bryndwr Road property were Christchurch families, Innes said there were still a lot of out-of-towners turning up to open homes looking for good properties.
Last year a luxury home on Helmores Lane in Fendalton sold under the hammer for $6.8m, just missing out on breaking the city’s long-held auction sale record by $25,000. However, it did take the record for the most expensive property to sell in Christchurch in 2022.
The auction sale record for Christchurch is held by a five-bedroom 1930s house on a huge 4961sqm riverside section on Glandovey Road, also in Fendalton, that sold at a Bayleys auction for $6.825m five years ago.
- Click here to find more properties for sale in Fendalton
