- Luxury-home buyers are abandoning properties when garages cannot fit their prized vehicles.
- Wealthy Auckland buyers often expect triple garages, even when choosing central suburbs.
- Buyers’ agents search off-market homes, negotiate prices, and advise clients when to walk away.
Some buyers are walking away from multi-million-dollar homes because the garage isn't big enough to hold their prized vehicles.
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Buyer's agent Alexandra Vincent Martelli says a high-end home loses its appeal when a Porsche scrapes the driveway, a buyer finds their Range Rover doesn't fit in the garage, or there's nowhere to park their prized car collection.
"Garaging becomes more important than people think about," she tells OneRoof.
It's a lesson she learned while representing a £62 million property in London a decade ago.
“The architects had failed to consider the fact that any buyer at that level probably has a Rolls-Royce Phantom or a Maybach, and the garaging could not fit that car. So that held up the sale.”
She said it's a problem wealthy Auckland buyers encounter too.
"People who are moving from Remuera or Mount Eden, they're used to triple garaging, [and] they want a really cool place in St Marys Bay or Ponsonby. But they have the full-height Range Rover and the golf clubs and the bikes, and there's no garaging.
Buyer's agent Alexandra Vincent Martelli: "You don't waste their time. You make sure you are finding the right home for them." Photo / Fiona Goodall
Auckland's Remuera is the suburb with the most mansions and - possibly - the most demanding buyers. Photo / Chris Tarpey
For buyers' agents, identifying those problems before a purchase is part of the job.
Day to day, Vincent Martelli and her team focus not just on finding the right house, but negotiating the best deal.
Her clients range from CEOs with $10 million budgets to buyers spending $800,000 on their first home. Others are newcomers trying to make sense of the Auckland market.
"I had a CEO call me, and he said, 'I want to speak to you because I am really good at negotiating business deals, but I do not negotiate real estate deals,'" she recalls.
"He recognised what he was good at negotiating, and what he wasn't good at negotiating property.
"And that is the bit that we love doing. That is our strength; we know how to negotiate real estate."
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That means knowing the properties as well as the agents who are selling them and what is happening in each suburb.
About 70% of the homes she shows buyers at the upper end of the market are not publicly advertised.
"The buyers we work with are people who want peace of mind that they're buying a really good quality home and they're paying a fair price."
Searches can take days or months. On average, Vincent Martelli will look at 10 or 15 properties before finding the right one for a client.
"You don't waste their time. You make sure you are finding the right home for them," he says.
"Most importantly, you know when to walk away. And you have to be brave enough to tell your client to walk away.
"You don't waste their time. You make sure you are finding the right home for them."
- Click here to find more properties for sale in Auckland
