A multi-million-dollar arts and craft house in one of New Zealand’s most sought-after suburbs is to be auctioned next month – but bidders will have to buy it sight unseen.
The OneRoof listing for 23 Orakei Road, in Remuera, in Auckland warns that viewings are not possible because it is a mortgagee sale, with the agent marketing the four-bedroom house that the best buyers can do is “stand on the street and look at it”.
READ MORE: Find out if your suburb is rising or falling
Bayleys sales agent Gary Wallace said that, as far as he knows, the sale on September 10 had nothing to do with Covid-19.
Start your property search
“I don’t know anything about the vendor’s circumstances but my understanding is it’s not Covid-related,” he said.
“It’s an unusual one in the sense that I’ve been appointed through Bayleys’ mortgagee division. We’ve been denied access so I’ve never even been on the property.
“We put a drone up to see how the property sits in the location. And I’m sending [interested parties] a Lim and a title and the link to the Auckland Council property file. People are basically doing their own due diligence. The fact that they can’t access the property - I guess they’ll just factor that in to what they’re prepared to pay at the end of the day.
“You can stand on the street and look at the house but what you see is what you get, because that’s all I’ve been able to do.”
One of the few pictures of inside the house. Photo / Supplied
The house, which last sold in 2005 for $1.1 million, has a CV of $3.45 million, and despite the viewing restrictions buyer interest has been substantial - about double the amount Wallace would normally get for the location.
Wallace said he couldn’t tell people much about the house, although he thinks it was renovated about 15 years ago. He warned buyers not expect a fire sale. “At the end of the day my job’s to maximise the value for the vendors and do my best for them under the circumstances. But I am astounded at the level of enquiry on the property. It’s been incredible,” he said.
“I think potentially it’s going to be an add-value proposition for whoever buys it but given the location and everything else it’s got going for it people are prepared to buy into it.”
While there has been talk of Covid-19 leading to an increase in distressed sales, Wallace had not heard of any. “From what I’ve been told, given the state of the economy and where interest rates are at, this is the last thing the banks want to be doing.”
He said mortgagee sales in double grammar zone were rare. “I think it’s only the second [mortgagee sale] I’ve ever done in my 16 years as an agent.”
OneRoof records show 23 Orakei Road is the first mortgagee sale in Remuera this year.
Fellow Bayleys agent David Rainbow agrees with Wallace that mortgagee sales in Remuera are rare. In his 36 years in real estate, he's had just two mortgagee sales.
"I haven't had anyone who needs to sell for a long time and I've been doing it for a while. It's not common, especially in high end properties, because most of the people have been in Remuera for a while and it's a stable location," he said.
- Additional reporting by Catherine Smith and Daria Kuprienko
