- A Remuera mansion sold for $10.01m, the highest auction price this year.
- The five-bedroom home features a pool, butler’s pantry, and secret library door.
- Remuera’s market has seen a lift, with strong auction activity and multiple registered bidders.
The housing market has ended 2025 on a surprising high note, with a mansion in Auckland’s Remuera selling for just over $10 million at auction.
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The five-bedroom trophy home on Bassett Road was snapped up on Thursday for more than its RV after a flurry of bids.
The sale price of $10.01m is the highest achieved at auction this year and the third-highest New Zealand auction price of all time.
Two buyers competed to own the grand home, which sits on a 1217sqm site and boasts a secret door.
Auctioneer Mark Sumich told OneRoof: “They went at each other for a while, and when it stalled after 15 bids, I suggested one bidder nudge above $10m, and he obliged. I call it a ‘binary bid’ – where we’ve only got ones and zeros in the number. It was quite a buzz.”
The Bassett Road home, which last sold for $4.25m, had been modernised by the vendors. Photo / Supplied
The library – with inbuilt bookshelves and ladder – is accessed through “a secret door” from the family room. Photo / Supplied
He said hosting the auction on-site had helped, noting that being on the grounds often adds urgency, as buyers can imagine themselves living in the property.
The Bassett Road house had been modernised by the vendors and features a pool, a butler’s pantry and a library accessed by a hidden door.
“We’ve had a wonderful time living here as a family,” the vendors told OneRoof last month. “It’s time for us to live somewhere smaller, and we hope that whoever buys it will enjoy it as much as we have.”
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Property records show the house last changed hands in 2010, for $4.25m.
Listing agents Jo Johnstone and Steve Koerber told OneRoof they had shown 15 qualified buyers through the house during the campaign. “We’re delighted,” Johnstone said. “It shows that people feel confident to bid at that level.”
Koerber said there had been a lift in Remuera’s housing market in the past month, telling OneRoof that he had sold six out of seven properties under the hammer in the last two weeks.
“From those auctions, there are 16 registered bidders who missed out. They had budgets between $2.5m and $10m and are ready to buy now or in the new year.”
The Bassett Road home was on a 1200sqm site on one of Auckland’s top streets. Photo / Supplied
Bayleys listing agent Steve Koerber has sold six out of seven properties under the hammer in the last two weeks. Photo / Fiona Goodall
The $10.01m Bassett Road sale price is the third-highest achieved at auction for a residential property. The top auction price is $12.8m, paid in March 2024 for a four-bedroom Arts & Crafts mansion on Remuera’s Orakei Road. The property was sold by Barfoot & Thompson agents Linda Galbraith and Cindy Yu, with the auction called by Murray Smith.
Another Remuera trophy home, a penthouse apartment at 308 Remuera Road, holds second place, with a sale price of $12.7715m, paid at a Bayleys auction in October 2022. The luxury pad was marketed by agents Jenny Kek and Robert Ashton and the auction called by Bayleys national auction manager Conor Patton.
Auctions at the lower end of the market have also enjoyed a strong run. On Wednesday, an auction newbie snapped up a West Auckland unit for $416,000, after it was marketed with a reserve of $1.
A two-bedroom unit on Frank Evans Place, in Auckland’s Henderson, went to auction with a $1 reserve and sold for $416,000. Photo / Supplied
More than 20 registered bidders attended the Ray White auction and placed a total of 34 bids.
Ray White agent Rosa Solano said the buyer had been a bit nervous as it was her first auction. “She jumped at the end. She was excited.”
Solano told OneRoof she received a text from the buyer the next morning saying she was “still buzzing”.
Solano said the buyer planned to spend time renovating the property before putting it back on the market. Most of the interest came from property traders and investors looking to add value. There were only two first-home buyers in the room.
Ray White auctioneer Cameron Brain said every $1 reserve auction he had held in the last two years had started at $1, so the opening bid of $100,000 had come as a surprise.
Bidding was pretty frantic, he said, until it reached around $300,000 with bids dropping down to $5000 and then $1000 near the end. “It was a good auction, great energy in the room.”
Sam Steele, head auctioneer for Ray White New Zealand, said last week’s OCR cut had energised the market. “There is this expectation from buyers that this drop is probably it,” he said.
“We’ve seen an increase in people who have sold their property and who are on the clock. They want to secure something by Christmas, so vendors have the opportunity to secure a very good price between now and Christmas.”
Harcourts national auction manager Shane Cortese told OneRoof that the market was ending on a positive note after a tough 2025. “I’ve got 40 auctions left to do in December. People are making transactional decisions. While there aren’t the quantity of people, the one or two or three people interested in the property, they’ve done their research, and they’re ready to put their hands up,” he said.
“Our owners are taking offers with conditions into consideration more than I’ve seen in a long time to get that certainty of purchase,” he said, adding that longer settlement times to allow buyers to sell their homes is the main negotiating point to get a deal over the line. “We’re going to end the year on a high.”
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