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An Auckland apartment specialist is seeing rising interest from owner-occupiers and has sold two places before auctions.
City Sales last week sold nine apartments: seven at an auction, one before and one afterwards.
Mike Richards, sales manager, said last Wednesday's auction produced encouraging results.
He said a rising number of bidders were owner/occupiers looking to buy into and then live in blocks they liked such as Metropolis.
"The auction produced encouraging signs, given the economic climate, aside from a clutch of Heritage Farmer studios under hotel management which were all passed in although we have subsequently sold one for $100,000 plus GST," he said.
An apartment in Auckland's Metropolis block sold before the auction and another in Day St also sold pre-auction a while ago, he said.
"We hardly ever sell any prior to the auction but in the last month we've twice sold properties pre-auction."
But many of the sellers got far less than what they had paid.
Richards said some of the vendors selling places lately were investors in failed property business Blue Chip.
Many units had been sold to the vendors off the plans at the peak of the property cycle, he said. Others such as The Landings were on leasehold land which put many buyers off.
City Sales' next apartment auction was next Wednesday and another auction would be held a week later, a temporary return to weekly auctions from the fortnightly events.
