- A renovated St Heliers home sold for $5.25m within days, attracting 48 interested parties.
- Luxury homes are selling quickly as wealthy buyers seek renovations and quality listings remain scarce.
- Forty of 116 Auckland sales above $5m sold within two months this year.
A luxuriously renovated four-bedroom home in Auckland’s eastern bays sold late last month for more than $5 million – within days of it hitting the market.
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The stylish property on Grampian Road, St Heliers, pulled in 48 potential buyers in its first 10 days on the market and attracted two offers after its first open home.
“Because there was so much energy in the open home, the people who were serious actually moved pretty quickly,” New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty listing agent Ross Hawkins told OneRoof.
“We frantically rang around and told people who were showing good interest that there was an offer. Then it became a multi-offer.”
Hawkins said the two offers on the table had come from cash-rich buyers who had already sold their homes.
“They knew a good thing when they saw it, so they moved,” he said. “They were a little bit sick of looking.”
Hawkins noted that the $5.25m sale price was considerably higher than the dated RV of $2.775m, which did not reflect the multimillion-dollar renovation.
The Grampian Road house had a major renovation during Covid, expanding the original 1970s house and adding a pool and entertainment areas. Photo / Supplied
Buyers who had sold their previous houses snapped up the fully done house. Photo / Supplied
He said buyers in the $5m-plus market wanted freshly renovated homes to spare themselves the time and cost of new work, and his Grampian Road listing ticked all the boxes in that regard.
OneRoof’s analysis of the market supports Hawkins’ assessment. Of the 116 settled sales worth $5m or more this year, 40 were snapped up within two months of hitting the market.
Hawkins said top-end buyers at this level were struggling to find good homes, noting that there were still too few listings matching Grampian Road’s quality.
“The smart ones are buying now. And what happens if the election does not go the way they want? What then? That is the big question,” he said.
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“So why wouldn’t you sell now, because who knows what’s going to happen next year? The buyers are there right now. People are sick of sitting on their hands for the last two years.”
Hawkins pointed to several other properties that had been snapped up at speed, including a completely renovated four-bedroom home on Bassett Road, in Remuera. That property had multiple offers within two days of the first open home (“it was a train station,” he said of the crowds) and sold for $5.11m. In Mount Eden, a renovated villa on Bellevue Road marketed by Ray White’s Emma Duncan and Sarah Colebrook at the start of the month sold in two weeks for more than its $5.6m RV.
The median days to sell for all of Auckland in July had increased to 50, while sales were down almost 9% year-on-year.
Agents expect a five-bedroom house at 18 Lammermoor Drive, St Heliers, will sell quickly too. Photo / Supplied
Hawkins and his colleague Karen Moore have just listed a concrete house on 18 Lammermoor Drive, in St Heliers, by well-known developer Peter Jones.
The five-bedroom, 535sqm house has garaging for eight cars, a full butler’s pantry, a lift between the three levels, a media room, and views of Rangitoto. “We’re expecting interest to be in the $6ms,” Hawkins said.
“We think you get a lot more in a house in the sixes than you do in an apartment in the sixes of the same sort of quality.”
Hawkins said the property had already been viewed by 13 groups in its first two days on the market. “Our results are actually proving to the market to go now, while you don’t have all the competition, because there are plenty of buyers,” he said.
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