It may have been the year of frenzy in auctions rooms around the country, but the final hammer came down on some mixed results in the last days before Christmas.
Last week, at Ray White City Realty’s final auction of the year, prices started as low as $116,000 when all seven properties on the slate sold under the hammer. Nineteen bidders shopped for Auckland apartments around Nelson Street, the university precincts, Takapuna and Mount Eden Road.
Ray White City Realty Group director Daniel Horrobin told OneRoof that there had been a shift in investor confidence, with buyers of the “shoebox” apartments expecting international students to return to the city sometime next year.
Cameron Brain, auction manager for City Realty, agreed.
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“Some of these flats were spurned by investors before. But mums and dads are calculating it’s cheaper for them to buy a leasehold apartment for the kids, the rents pay body corporate, rates, and most of the mortgage. These are affordable, you can still pick them up,” he said.
Brain noted first home buyers were back, with three or four bidders competing for a two-bedroom flat in Mount Eden Road that eventually sold for $891,000.
He said that buyers were having a tough time with bank pre-approvals, with some buyers’ price limits dropping by $300,000 to $400,000 or more. One buyer he knew of had their bank pre-approved of $1.7m cut to just $1.275m last week.
A two-bedroom leasehold apartment in Auckland’s Dockside Lane, off Quay Street, sold for $148,050. Photo / Supplied
Bargains were snapped up at the Ray White auction. A two-bed student studio in Whitaker Place went for $116,000, while a tidy two-bedroom leasehold apartment in Dockside Lane, just off Quay Street, sold for $148,050. And a tiny two-bedroom unit in Symonds Street got $157,700 – well below its 2017 CV of $270,000 and barely more than the $135,000 the vendor paid over 16 years ago.
Exceptional properties are still finding buyers, though.
An architect-designed house in Hillside Road, Ostend, Waiheke Island sold for $2.21m. Photo / Supplied
Bidders paid $4.85m for a brand new five-bedroom home on O'Neill Street, in Ponsonby, Auckland. Photo / Supplied
At today’s Barfoot & Thompson auctions an impressive brand new five-bedroom concrete, glass and steel house on Ponsonby’s O’Neill Street fetched a whopping At Barfoot & Thompson's auctions on Wednesday an impressive five-bedroom concrete, glass and steel house on Ponsonby’s O’Neill Street fetched $4.85m while a traditional four-bedroom home on Albury Avenue, in Epsom, sold for $4.24m, well above its $3.1m CV.
But those were the exceptions. Of the day’s 85 lots, 58 were recorded as having passed in by the end of Wednesday.
At Bayleys auctions on the same a three-bedroom architect-designed home on Hillside Road, Ostend, fetched $2.21m, more than double its CV of $940,000, but other Waiheke Island properties did not fare so well.
A three-bedroom property on Mangawhai Heads, Mangawhai, sold for $2.6m at auction. Photo / Supplied
Passing in were a two-bed character cottage on Kennedy Road, in Surfdale; a stylishly renovated three-bedroom house on Lannan Road, also Surfdale; and a huge five-bedroom house on Erua Road, Ostend.
North of the city, the hammer came down at $3.5m for a four-bedroom property on a generous 1.6 hectare site on the rise of Tamahunga Drive, in Matakana, but a glamorous four-bedroom home with wide harbour and golf course views on Omaha Drive, Omaha, passed in as did a five-bedroom spread on Alamar Crescent, in Mangawhai.
