Eight bidders lined up for a bungalow in Auckland’s Mt Albert last week in a sign that the city’s real estate market is emerging from the slump.
The four-bedroom home on a 697sq m section on Harbutt Ave had attracted three pre-auction offers and ended up selling for $2.103 million - more than $300,000 above CV.
Ray White agent Jamie Morrison, who marketed the property with Michelle Roache, told OneRoof: “We had 70 people through open homes and three pre-auction offers, one at $1.9m.”
He said that the home’s location, just off the Woodward Rd corner of Mount Albert near the Unitec campus on Carrington Rd, appealed to buyers keen to get into Mt Albert Grammar and Gladstone Primary school zones.
“The majority of buyers were from Avondale, New Windsor, Mount Roskill or Blockhouse Bay. They’d be selling up for around $1.4m and trading up to get into Mt Albert,” he said, adding that buyers in suburbs on the western side were more likely to be trading up to Avondale Heights, Waterview or even Point Chev.
Morrison said that buyers did the math on the 2004 extension of the original bungalow, figuring that the large extension would cost around $500,000 in today’s dollars.
“Houses like this don’t come along very often.
“When the market consolidates then buyers orientate around the best quality. A new-build or a spec house would just sit and sit. While vendors are deciding not to go to market, buyers are still competitive.”
He noted that while new listings are down 50 per cent on a typical spring – the pair would normally have six or eight listings at this time of year, compared to the one to three currently – old stock that has sat all winter is not moving.
“It’s the lowest new stock numbers I’ve seen in my 15 years in real estate,” he said.
“If a house hasn’t sold after four to six weeks, you’d be better off to withdraw the property or discount, but many agents and vendors are afraid to do that.
“The sad thing is that if owners [of the old properties] put them on now, we’d get more money. But buyers see ‘old fruit’ for sale, and they don’t want it.”
Other agents have seen strong competition for good stock nearby.
9A Newcastle Terrace, Mt Albert.
At the beginning of October, a three-bedroom 1990s cedar home on a cross-lease site on Newcastle Terrace, in the same school zones, sold under the hammer for $1.2m, just $50,000 short of its CV.
Ray White agent Luke Crockford, who marketed the property with Scott Bartlett, said that the 61 groups at open homes translated into four registered bidders.
“There are just a few properties out there [like this], it attracted second-home buyers as entry-level to Mt Albert,” Crockford said.
24B Fifth Ave, Mt Albert.
Another property in the same area and school zones - a smartly renovated three-bedroom 1940s home on Fifth Ave - also sold under the hammer at the start of the month for $1.5m, just over its CV of $1.45m.
Bidding was fast and furious on the stylish property, marketed by Barfoot & Thompson agents Matt O’Rourke and Ryan Harding, and it sold in nine minutes, after 19 bids.
