A grand home at 99 Parakiore Rd, in Kamo West, Northland, has been a labour of love for its owners.
A grand home at 99 Parakiore Rd, in Kamo West, Northland, has been a labour of love for its owners.
A grand European-style chateau overlooking Whangārei has been placed on the market for sale with price expectations of $3 million-plus.
Bayleys agents Damien Davis and Sue Maich told OneRoof the four-bedroom lifestyle property at 99 Parakiore Rd, in Kamo West, was a “landmark” home and had been the talk of the city since hitting the market.
The 1000sq m house sits on 3.49ha site and has an RV of $2.6 million, although Davis said it was likely to go for “upwards of $3 million”.
“To build this today, you’d be looking at $8 million,” he said, adding that the house has been a labour of love over a number of years for its timber merchant owner, who handcrafted the dramatic curving stair and wall panels from jarrah and American oak.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if [the buyer] was a local family, but we’re also expecting enquiry from across the country. In terms of floor space and magnitude, it’s the largest we’ve sold in the city,” Davis said, adding that this sort of size and price range of property is usually found in coastal towns like Tutukaka, Whangārei Heads or Marsden Cove.
But at the other end of the scale, keen first-buyers have been picking up bargains this winter.
The Parakiore Rd, Kamo West, property is a well-known local landmark, handcrafted by the owners over many years.
Ray White agent Zoltan Waxman, with Devon Cameron, sold two fixer-upper rural properties in the past couple of months, and says price levels at the lowest they’ve been in years are flushing out the buyers.
“At the peak, you couldn’t find anything under $400,000. Now there are good selections in the $300,000s to $400,000, even properties up to $600,000 are seeing good action from first-home buyers,” he told OneRoof, adding that the lower sum would get a good two to three-bedroom, 90sq m house in a lower socio-economic suburb.
Better quality homes, not brand-new, can be had for $650,000 to $800,000, the agent says, with prices up to $1.5m to $1.8m “not unheard of”.
“Right now the $2 million-plus sales have stopped, they don’t exist.”
Super bargains are not always conventional in Whangārei.
This winter Waxman and Cameron had two properties that might politely be called fixer-uppers.
The pair brought a run-down four-bedroom house on Mount Pleasant Rd, Raumanga, south west of the city centre, to auction last month with the billing “large garage, 1965sq m section and a FREE house!” The vendor, now living in Australia, had used the 1920s house as accommodation for seasonal farm workers and when the agents came in, there were still sheets on the beds and toothbrushes in the bathroom.
A run-down house on Mount Pleasant Rd in Raumanga, billed as free with its 1965sq m section, sold for $389,000.
“It’s a sad story. But we had lots of interest because people thought they would get a good deal, even though they realised it would take quite a bit of work,” he said.
Despite banks being reluctant to lend on the property, nine bidders registered for the auction, Waxman says, with six bidding. The property, which had a CV of $480,000 – $205,000 of that in the land value – sold for $389,000 to a neighbour.
Waxman says despite its generous size, the property could not be subdivided because of local regulations on driveways and infrastructure, so its market was limited.
Back in April, Waxman and Cameron sold an even more run-down property on Taipuha Station Rd, about 40 minutes out of the city in Waipū. The property’s 1930s four-bedroom house was advertised as free, with the agents pitching the 8610sq m of land and “one great 56sq m shed” for the property which has a CV of $425,000.
“No doubt that vision and a tool belt is needed here. Get the jam jar and the piggy bank out, you will need to start counting coins,” the agents say in their advertising.
Despite one would-be buyer suggesting gasoline and a box of matches would be the best solution, bargain hunters from Norfolk Island to Invercargill responded to the promise of a low reserve and the house sold for $397,000 to a first-home buyer.
“First-home buyers are definitely back,” Waxman points out.
Like all the agents OneRoof talked to, Waxman says there is a shortage of properties although vendors who are listing now are ready to accept that they won’t get the prices of 2021 and early 2022.
“In this market, it’s the vendor who makes the sale, not the buyer. The vendors need to meet the market [on price], as buyers know the house will still be there until it does.”
He expects spring’s usual supply of new listings to be boosted even more by vendors who are coming off fixed mortgages at the old low rates deciding to sell and downsize rather than grapple with a huge increase in their mortgage payments.
Rachael Dennis, Bayleys residential sales leader for the mid-North, noted that this winter, unusually, the heartland market of Whangārei is performing better than the more up-scale coastal spots.
The exception was a one-bedroom beach barn on Rockell Rd, Whananaki, that had a pre-auction offer after one week on the market and three active bidders before selling for around $1m in June.
“With well-priced property, we’re getting auctions brought forward. Where we’ve well managed expectations and clearly communicated prices, vendors can sell and are so happy,” she says.
Dennis says agents are starting to get more interest from vendors to list for spring, although some are worried about the “distraction” of the election narrowing their buyer pool.
“That could have an impact on any financial acquisitions. People would rather be done by October 8 or are waiting until the end of October,” she says.
Harcourts Whangārei owner Mike Beazley agrees there is a positive mood change for spring, but that for many of the younger buyers the elections aren’t affecting their buying plans as a lot aren’t voting.
He says the strongest performing segment is around the district’s median price of $697,000.
“For that you can get a nice three-bedroom house in a reasonable suburb. At the end of July, we had three first-home buyers going for it for a house in Tapper Crescent that went for $557,000 after four weeks,” he says.
Beazley says most vendors have got their heads around today’s market prices so the company is planning to crank up auction campaigns going into spring.
Barfoot & Thompson branch manager Steve Sharp says that while sales are certainly nowhere near their heyday of 2021 and early 2022, listings are picking up. However, with about 870 houses for sale in the district, he says that is only half the number of listings available 10 or so years ago.
While first-home buyers are picking up properties in the high $300,000s, which would have been $500,000 at the market peak, the shortage of properties is felt most in what Sharp calls the ‘unicorn’ segment – modern four-bedroom brick and tile homes on a 2000 to 4000sqm section in the $1.2m to $1.5m price range.
Sharp adds that although there are several new subdivisions with 100 or more house and land packages, buyers are unsure about dealing with the uncertain cost of building.
Like Dennis, he expects that a change of government after the elections will help buyer and seller confidence in the town, but the influx of new immigrants may create property shortages again, as it did before Covid.
