OneRoof's Need to Know series with Frances Cook looks at how first home buyers can play to their strengths.
You might have expected to see more hustle and bustle.
With each step at Saturday's open home viewing, the developers and prospective buyers were hastening Point Chevalier's transformation from suburban homes and lemon tree backyards to mushrooming multi-storey apartments.
Yet they appeared in no rush as they inspected the two side-by-side properties for sale at 17 and 19 Walmer Rd.
They instead talked quietly with Harcourts selling agents David Findlay and Aman Gulia, discussing project cost numbers, development possibilities and the sale prices of nearby homes.
They arrived in top-of-the-line Teslas, on a motorbike and even old hatchbacks.
Walmer Rd's first major development - an under-construction five-storey complex with 33 apartments called On Point - was rising a few doors down, and its owner popped by in shorts and jandals to check in on the open home viewing.
Just one young family wandered through, a two-week-old baby in a harness close to its mother's chest.
Property investor Benjamin Lu also came to look. He hoped to secure the two properties and landbank them, but knew it would be tough given their appeal to developers
"This section with two properties side by side is a very good-looking site for developers because it is very hard to find both of them at the same time," he said.
The viewings came as Auckland's housing market was booming.
All-time low interest rates had brought out hordes of cashed-up, hungry buyers and sent median sales prices to a record high $955,000 in September, according to the Real Estate Institute.
Yet developers were especially on the hunt.
They typically had access to greater funding and an ability to generate healthy profits from demolishing homes on large sections and turning them into townhouses and apartments.
Harcourts agents Findlay and Gulia said that in the past four weeks they had sold $22 million worth of homes, all within a hop, skip and jump on neighbouring streets.
Property Investor Benjamin Lu at an open home viewing for 17 Walmer Rd in Point Chevalier. Photo / Hayden Woodward
They pointed over the flat roofs of single-storey homes in the direction of these sales.
Soon those properties will be visible to the eye from the same spot as each - having sold to a developer - begins rising above the suburban landscape as multi-storey developments.
For the time being, the two homes at 17 and 19 Walmer Rd were comfortable three- and four-bedroom homes.
Yet the chances they would remain this way seemed slim.
Like the nearby properties, their real appeal lay in the fact both sat on 671sq m sections and were for sale at the same time.
That meant a developer could buy both sites and potentially build a five-storey complex of up to 30 apartments in their place, just like the major-development down the road.
The young family that passed through the open home viewing knew this also.
They were looking to buy a family home, not an investment property.
Yet they told Harcourts agent Findlay they were hopeful of competing with the developers.
Should they pay a premium price to snap up one of the two homes, they figure the land would only go up in value in the coming years and they will be guaranteed to sell for a profit later.
Property investor Lu only began investing five years ago and recently started his first development in which he was building eight small homes on a 900sq m site in Massey.
Building a five-storey development was out of the question for him at the moment, but that didn't mean he wasn't interested in buying the Walmer Rd homes.
"Absolutely, I'm always looking at other sites because interest rates are so low," he said.
"If you can secure something like this you can landbank and rent it out and then do a development later."
