- Fourteen bids in under 120 seconds exceeded the reserve by over $100,000 for a Remuera home.
- Ray White’s Frazer Mackenzie-Johnson said the auction was a case of “right house, right time”.
- Auction sales have improved, with exceptional properties attracting plenty of bidders and pre-auction offers.
Fourteen bids in under 120 seconds blew away the reserve by more than $100,000. On the block was a four-bedroom family home on Maungarei Road, in Auckland’s Remuera. The open homes had been packed, with over 130 groups, and an offer of $1.64 million - well above the RV of $1.275m - pulled the auction forward by a week.
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Three bidders slugged it out in Ray White Remuera’s auction room, with the winning bid of $1.75m placed by the same buyers who made the pre-auction offer, an expat family returning from the UK.
Listing agent Frazer Mackenzie-Johnson said the auction result was a case of “right house, right time”.
“Stock levels are starting to come down, so the vendors’ timing to list their home was good,” he said.
Sixteen bidders registered for an immaculate townhouse on Seaview Road, in Northcote Point, with a remarkably low RV of $870,000 for the sought-after suburb. Photo / Supplied
The agent said another property he was selling received a strong offer within days of hitting the market. “The buyer, a developer, has been looking for a while, and his observation was that things are selling much faster than they were a few months ago, so he moved with speed,” he said.
Over on Auckland’s North Shore, buyers were jumping on a three-bedroom townhouse on Seaview Road, in Northcote Point. Ray White listing agent Helene Brownlee said that she had 16 bidders at the auction, drawn by the $870,000 RV – remarkably low for the sought-after suburb.
“The opening bid was $1.1m, and suddenly we were down to just two bidders. The other 14 dropped out,” she said.
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An out-of-town couple who were moving to be closer to their grandchildren won the house with a bid of $1.165m.
Brownlee said the house had been well presented; without that level of finish, “nothing like this happens”.
At the upper end of the market, a five-bedroom house on a generous 733sqm corner site on Kingsley Street, in Westmere, pulled in over 65 groups of buyers and seven bidders
Ray White listing agent Charlotte Kofoed said the hammer came down at $4.675m - $550,000 above RV.
A five-bedroom house on Kingsley Street, in Auckland’s Westmere, sold under the hammer for $4.675m. Photo / Supplied
“Buyers knew that the vendor was definitely on the move, and the likelihood of a sale under the hammer was high,” she said.
She noted that there was strong demand for large family homes in the suburb, and buyers had jumped on Kingsley Street. “We met buyers with budgets from $3m right up to $8m - upsizers and downsizers. There is not a lot for them to look at on the market.”
Auction sales have improved since the start of spring. Ray White’s head auctioneer Sam Steele told OneRoof that exceptional properties were performing well in the current market, attracting plenty of bidders and pre-auction offers.
Another sign of a busier market: fewer auctions are pausing for negotiations. The offers are flowing, and auctioneers are less likely to be begging for bids.
Ray White auctioneer Sam Steele says auction sales have risen since the start of spring. Photo / Fiona Goodall
Bayleys national auction manager Conor Patton warned vendors not to expect a frenzy in the auction rooms. Buyers shouldn’t expect things to go their way, either. “We seem to be in a relatively balanced market,” he said.
“If a property isn’t in competition, if it doesn’t stand out, then it’s not going to attract that five or six bidders. Special properties will have a lot of interest. If a property has got compromises, or there is a lot of competing stock, it won’t be a hot auction.”
He said that vendors sitting on older listings should be mindful that buyers are still price-sensitive, and that fresher stock is about to hit the market.
Ray White auctioneer John Bowring noted that, even with high numbers of bidders, some vendors still weren’t prepared to drop their price expectations to meet the market. It’s not 2021 FOMO, he said.
However, “stock isn’t hanging around for as long as it used to”.
“But it just has to be exceptional in the vendors’ eyes. I’m just not seeing prices rise, I’m seeing more consistency of buyers – but they have all got a price limit.”
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