His marketing campaign had highlighted the coastal property's northerly aspect "with a peep of the sea" and a flat lawn ideal for backyard cricket or football.
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Elsewhere, a two-bedroom upstairs unit in Mt Albert has reaped two property investors $97,000 above the $491,000 they paid for it in April.
It sold at another Barfoot auction for $588,888 last week, according to property agent Joey Zhuang.
The unit's CV is $350,000.
Ms Zhuang indicated the new owner was another investor, but said the sellers had made "many changes" to the property.
A previous owner, Danny Oarga, said the only improvement he and his wife noticed from marketing material was a new internal door handle.
Mr Oarga said that although they sold the unit in April, the investors did not take possession until June, as they had to give tenants notice to vacate it.
"So they flicked it on in little more than a month," he said.
"That was definitely a first home, but it shows how unaffordable the market is becoming."
Mr Oarga said although the property had been "quite a nice, tidy unit", it was in a somewhat run-down complex with no body corporate and had no big section of land around it.
The couple had been upfront when selling the property that it needed a new roof.
He said the people who bought the unit had let it to new tenants for $500 a week, compared with the $370 a week they had been charging.
Barfoot and Thompson director Peter Thompson did not respond to a request for comment, but earlier confirmed a sale price of $628,000 for a modest West Auckland house which the Herald reported yesterday had changed hands four times in three months.
That represented a $153,000 price increase in 13 weeks, including a $69,000 boost for one of Mr Thompson's agents, who paid $559,000 for the property in mid-July.
Mr Thompson confirmed the seller was a member of his sales team, which had been "a hundred per cent disclosed" to the new owner.
Property investor Alan Pattison said the various sellers of the West Auckland property would have cleared only about $70,000 between them after estate commissions of around $80,000 and legal fees.
Struggle to downsize on Shore
When Jane Neville decided to downsize from her North Shore house in Browns Bay, she never imagined it would take eight months to find a new one.
Ms Neville went to many open homes and auctions over that time, some of which were dominated by housing investors with "really deep pockets".
She described how at an auction for a house she was really keen on, a bidder - who she believes was a foreign investor - came in late and "blew everyone away".
"The auction had started and she just went up in $20,000 increments, as if it was just Monopoly."
To make matters worse, Ms Neville said she then noticed some of the sold houses getting put up for rent soon after, or standing empty.
"The houses sell, then either the 'For Rent' sign goes up, or otherwise the grass verge in the front becomes overgrown ... and a little while later it will be for sale again, or else it just sits there empty."
She finally managed to buy a three-bedroom, one-level house in Torbay in May. A month later she sold her old house. "I bought before I sold, which was risky, but in this market I took the gamble."
A house on her new street that also sold in May was still sitting unoccupied, she said, with the windows shuttered and the letterbox overflowing.
- Scott Yeoman
