- An investor sold his Manurewa rental property for $630,000 in NZ dollars.
- The owner initially sought Bitcoin but settled for dollars after rejecting a $650,000 crypto offer.
- The property attracted multiple offers, mainly from first-home buyers and investors seeking good yields.
A property investor who had hoped to sell his South Auckland rental property for Bitcoin has settled for New Zealand dollars instead.
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Brendon Wang aimed to make auction history when he listed his three-bedroom brick and tile unit home on Weymouth Road, in Manurewa, in January.
He was going to give bidders the chance to buy the property in cash or Bitcoin. The property passed in at auction, after which Wang relisted it with a price tag of $659,000 or 3.99BTC.
The owners spent about $60,000 remodelling and renovating the property. Photo / Supplied
He did get one offer in cryptocurrency, but it was the wrong sort so he turned it down.
Ray White listing agent William Vaea told OneRoof a Pukekohe real estate agent viewed the property on behalf of his brother and offered to pay Wang $650,000 in Australian Crypto Coin Green, which hit an all-time high of A$0.0037 earlier this month.
But Wang only wanted Bitcoin or New Zealand dollars (which he could then use to buy Bitcoin). Earlier this month, he accepted an offer of $630,000.
Wang told OneRoof in January that he and his wife had been investing in Bitcoin for about six years and, after crunching the numbers, had decided the cryptocurrency offered better returns.
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“That’s why we want to switch to a faster horse, to swap from property investment to crypto investment,” he said.
“We think with Bitcoin reaching its all-time high recently, it would be good for someone to take the profit and swap their profit into property. There’s always two-way traffic in this kind of scenario.
“I think people who bought Bitcoin at a lower price and have now doubled or tripled their money might now want to sell Bitcoin for property.”
Wang and his wife paid $556,000 for the property in 2020 and spent a further $60,000 on remodeling and renovations.
The first-home buyers who purchased the unit had been searching South Auckland for almost three months and wanted to get something before their pre-approval expired within a few weeks.
“When they came to us, they had kind of had it, so they were just wanting to get it over and done with,” Vaea said.
He said it was a shame they couldn’t get a deal over the line in Bitcoin which would have been a first for New Zealand, but the seller would still be able to use the proceeds from the sale to invest in the cryptocurrency.
Vaea said the huge number of houses for sale in South Auckland meant first-home buyers had a lot of choice.
Even though most had a budget of around $750,000, he said not all were prepared to spend it. “They want to get good value. For instance, most of the people who came through Weymouth Road had a budget of $700,000-$750,000, but they refused to go over $610,000.”
Other properties that might suit first-home buyers are a renovated two-bedroom, one-bathroom house at 3/16 Helms Place, in Manurewa, priced at $624,000, and a three-bedroom, one-bathroom home on a 761sqm section at 9 Justamere Place, in Weymouth, which is being auctioned off at the end of the month.
- Click here to find more properties for sale in Auckland
