- Christchurch home sells for $1.37m, beating its expected price by $140,000 after a fierce auction.
- Five bidders contested the four-bedroom Redwood property after a $1.23m pre-auction offer.
- Agents say development land, especially near the University of Canterbury, is attracting strong demand.
A Christchurch homeowner had “more than a tear” in his eye after his house of 20 years sold this week for $140,000 more than he expected.
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The sale of the well-loved four-bedroom home on Grimseys Road, in Redwood, comes as agents told OneRoof there was strong demand in the city for properties with a decent amount of land.
Grimseys Road was one such unicorn. It is positioned on a prominent corner site and spans over 1600sqm across two separate freehold titles.
When it hit the market at the end of August, buyers didn’t hang around.
One made a pre-auction offer of $1.23 million – just above the RV and enough to bring the auction forward by a week.
That in itself wasn’t enough to kill off the competition, with four more buyers turning to bid at Monday’s auction.
After eight minutes and 35 bids, the property sold for $1,373,500.
Harcourts Gold agent Hayden Roulston said two buyers, including the one who made the pre-auction offer, really wanted the property and were bidding hard to win it.
Harcourts agent Hayden Roulston pictured with his vendors Graeme and Heather Pettigrew immediately after their successful auction. Photo / Supplied
The Pettigrews’ property appealed to buyers because it was on a large corner site spread over two titles. Photo / Supplied
“They were going up pretty quickly to start – $5000s and $10,000s and then it got up into the early $1.3ms, and then it got up little by little and then another couple of leaps and before you know it you are close to $1.4m.”
The successful bidder was the woman who made the pre-auction offer.
Roulston’s vendors, Graeme Pettigrew and his wife Heather, were in the room and couldn’t believe the result.
In a video posted on social media after the auction, Graeme said the auction process had been interesting and challenging, but they were “pretty chuffed” with the result.
“I had more than a tear in my eye in the auction room.”
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Graeme and his wife have lived at the property for more than 20 years and were selling to downsize and move north. He said the sale price had been above what they had hoped for.
Roulston said it was an outstanding result and a lot more than they had been prepared to take. “They said yes to $1.23m and in a very short space of time [they got] $1,373,500 and that’s just life-changing money.”
While Pettigrew had reservations about going to auction and staging the property, he said they trusted in the process and it paid off.
Harcourts agent Lydia O’Loughlin had worked with the buyer and noted that she was a “capable, strong woman” looking for an exciting project.
“That house reminded her of one she had previously owned ... she liked that; she liked the feel of it because it brought back memories of living in a previous property that she had previously adored, so there was a little bit of emotional attachment.”
An “as is, where is” property on Ballantyne Avenue, in Upper Riccarton, sold for $760,000 last month at a heated auction. Photo / Supplied
O’Loughlin said the buyer planned to live at the property before deciding what to do with it, adding that it isn’t always a sure thing that the buyer who makes the pre-auction offer gets the property in the end.
“They are normally the person who misses out because for them to comprehend in their head that they brought it forward at this level and now they are being challenged and having to pay so much more.”
Even though her client paid an extra $143,500, the numbers still stacked up.
“We knew it was a really good offering and there were lots of options. She hadn’t determined yet what she was going to do with it, but it seemed to stack up that she could do a variety of things with it, and I think that’s why it had broad appeal.”
O’Loughlin said properties with development potential – especially ones near the University of Canterbury – were extremely hot in the Christchurch market and getting the biggest numbers at auction.
“People are just snapping up hot land there.”
Another client of hers fought off three other bidders and paid $740,000 for a property in Upper Riccarton last month after missing out on two other properties in the suburb.
O’Loughlin said builders and smaller developers were looking for projects to meet the growing demand for student accommodation, especially as student enrolments were set to grow in the next few years.
“It [Ballantyne Avenue] was an ‘as is’ property, so you are purely buying it for land value. So, chunks of land are particularly sought after, especially in that Upper Riccarton area.”
Other properties doing well at auction included one on Arthur Street, which fetched $1.081m – over $100,000 above the reserve and one near the university on Suva Street, which sold for $1.055m.
“All of these properties had multiple bidders, and if you look at our normal auctions, you’ve got anywhere from zero, one, two or three bidders on it, but the ones that are generating five or six bidders in the room are the land sales in Christchurch.”
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