A vintage 1970s A-frame house in Wanaka sold at auction this week for $1.585 million, nearly $1m more than its 2017 rating valuation.
Harcourts agent Denise Barr, who marketed the three-bedroom property on popular Hunter Crescent with Phil Wilson, said the 15 bidders competing at the auction were after the location, one of the most sought-after in the resort town.
“People just love that area of old Wanaka and there’s not a lot of supply but huge interest. We’re selling about half our properties to locals, half [to] out-of-towners but there’s not a lot at those price points,” she said.
She told OneRoof that buyers were now pushing out to neighbouring towns and suburbs like Lake Hawea, about 20 minutes away.
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“As people get priced out of Wanaka, they’re going to Hawea. A three-bedroom home in Nichol Street just sold for $1.125m; places in Albert Town [about five minutes out of town] are getting over $1m.
Houses in what’s known as old Wanaka are highly sought after for their views and roomy sections. Photo / Supplied
“In Wanaka, you can still get a very well-built townhouse on 300sqm at North Lake subdivision for around $785,000, that’s about all there under $1m.”
Barr said some investors were quitting older 1970s and 1980s rental properties that no longer met the health homes regulations, but that buyers were trying to present pre-auction offers within days to pre-empt competition.
Bayleys Wanaka owner/director Mat Andrews said he can remember the fuss almost 20 years ago when the first house in the town sold for more than $1m.
The stylish property had been a permanent home for its now Auckland-based owners. Photo / Supplied
“Everyone talked about it. Now $900,000 or more is everyday entry level, and $4m to $5m is nothing,” he said.
“At the other end of the scale, we have $8m to $10m deals in the pipeline, but they are high profile people who are totally private and nobody knows about them. We’ve got buyers with $10m, $12m or money no object, we have to discreetly door-knock to see if someone will sell.”
And while there have been deals done with out-of-towners, Andrews said many of them had strong family connections to the area, who may have grown up in the area or holidayed in the town.
A three-bedroom house on Nichol Street, Lake Hawea, sold for $1.125m. Photo / Supplied
“They’ll know the address, they’ll know exactly the area, so even if they’d not been down [during lockdown] they’re not strangers.”
Fifteen bidders, most of them on the phone, competed for the stylishly updated home on Hunter Crescent with mountain and lake views and a roomy 809sqm section, pushing the price $335,000 past the pre-auction offer.
Barr said the locked-down Auckland vendors, who had owned the home for 15 years and had lived there permanently at one point, were unable to fly down to empty the house, so sold most of the contents too. They paid $360,000, records show, in 2006.
Bidders were a mix of Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury buyers, as well as Dunedin, Queenstown and Wanaka locals, with the property eventually selling to Dunedin buyers.
Harcourts Wanaka manager Grant Parker said, “In this current environment, putting an estimated selling price on a property is challenging.
“Many buyers entering the market firmly believe we’re not at the top of the market and the medium-term forecast for the area is positive.”
