Two sales of more than$10 million in two weeks in Auckland's blue-chip eastern suburbs: surprising to even one of the city's most experienced real estate agents.
“We didn’t know what to expect coming out of Covid,” says Bayleys agent Gary Wallace, who brokered two $10 million sales in September.
READ MORE: Find out if your suburb is rising or falling
“All we’re doing is playing the ball that is in front of us. It’s a lovely market.”
Start your property search
Wallace, with his wife and business partner Vicki Wallace, and more recently son Andrew, has been selling real estate in the wealthy eastern side of town for over 15 years. He said their sales had been their strongest ever in their career this year.
Bayleys agents Gary and Vicki Wallace sold two properties for over $10 million each in the past two weeks. Photo / Fiona Goodall
“We’ve sold $100 million [worth] of property since January. It really is amazing,” he said.
The Wallaces sell many of their properties off market – no advertising campaigns, just a discreet mention from a vendor that their house is on the market.
This was the case for one of the two top properties, which never hit the market. Confidentiality was a huge part of these deals, said Wallace, who could disclose that one buyer was from Singapore (permitted under the foreign buyers regulations) and the other a local who had been looking for “just the right property” for some two years.
“To be fair, those properties are few and far between. It’s bit of a jigsaw. We shoulder-tapped the vendor. They say, ‘We want to be under the radar, you’ll have the buyer for it’,” he said. “And we do.”
The Wallaces also brokered two other sales in recent weeks for more than $4 million: one in Burwood Crescent, Parnell, and another in Fenton Circus just off Paratai Drive in Orakei. They also sold under the hammer a piece of development land at 24 Patteson Avenue, Mission Bay, for $3.6 million.
1 Fern Avenue, in Epsom, Auckland, on the market for the first time in 14 years, sold for over $5 million. Photo / Supplied
Rachel Dovey, who heads Bayleys residential sales for the Eastern Bays, including Remuera, said that the office had seen quite a few big sales in the past three months, including another for over $8 million in Epsom that had “high interest”.
“Buyers are mainly locals, not expats. People in this bracket don’t just buy the first house they see, and a lot of vendors don’t relinquish their properties easily. We’re matching up a passive buyers and sellers and these properties don’t often come up as people don’t really move on.”
She said that it is telling that their clients, smart business owners, are putting their money into bricks and mortar.
Last week, Ray White Epsom agent Ross Hawkins sold a luxury home in Arney Crescent, originally built by former All Black captain Sean Fitzpatrick, for more than $10 million.
In Epsom, UP Realty agent Lisa Pringle sold a classic Arts and Crafts house at 1 Fern Avenue for a confidential sum over $5 million. She said the vendors, who had extensively refurbished the house in the 14 years they’d been there, were “very, very happy”.
The owners told OneRoof that the double grammar zone house in an exclusive enclave had once belonged to Auckland University with the resident vice chancellors hosting many celebrated guests. Pringle said the buyers were Kiwis who had returned from the United States a year earlier who had been looking for exactly the right house since then.
Fierce bidding drove the price of 5A Speight Road Kohimarama to $3.6 million, nearly twice what it last sold for in 2012. Photo / Supplied
Demand is across lower price points too.
Last week in Kohimarama, Ray White Remuera agent Steen Nielsen had five bidders competing in a “fierce” auction for a cedar and brick home at 5A Speight Avenue. The four-bedroom house, only 200 metres from the beach, had last sold for $1.8 million eight years ago but sold under the hammer for $3.6 million, well above its CV of $2.85 million.
“It started at $2.5 million, but some bidders didn’t even get a chance to put their hand up. It just went,” Nielsen said, adding the buyers were locals who had been looking for a while.
Also at Kohimarama, another Ray White agent Julian Blanch sold a luxury waterfront apartment at 1/195 Tamaki Drive, Kohimarama for $3.275 million - almost $700,000 above its CV.
Nielsen said competition is so fierce that another property he is marketing - a classic 1970s three-bedroom cedar and block townhouse in a block of three at 112 St Stephens Avenue - had 50 people through its first weekend of open homes and received a pre-auction offer. It goes to auction October 14 and has a CV of $2.525 million.
“People are just queuing up for it,” Nielsen said.
Barfoot & Thompson’s Remuera office has also closed a deal for more than $9 million this month. The location and price were confidential, said manager Carolyn Vernon, adding that there were a lot of people who were looking at that price level.
“We’re selling $5 million properties that are really just the land value, but it’s families wanting to use it as their big family home. They’re looking for lifetime homes for the next generation. It’s not just developers.”
Vernon said that buyers don’t often need to sell a home to buy the next one in these multi-million dollar price points.
Both she and Megan Jaffe, owner of Ray White Remuera, said they have had their best September sales on record.
Jaffe, whose office topped Ray White’s international rankings last month with sales of $105 million, said that last month's sales were double those for September 2019, with 95 homes sold in the month.
One of the top sales was a house at 28 Ridings Road that went for $4.788 million at auction. Billed as a Grand Designs-type do up, the double grammar zone house was considered entry level for the street, said Ray White Remuera agent Steve Koerber, who marketed the property. Buyers would expect so spend another $2 million on renovations, he said.
