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Prices ranged from $130,000 to $450,000 at this week's Auckland apartment auctions

Property
Prices ranged from $130,000 to $450,000 at this week's Auckland apartment auctions

The biggest lineup at this week's Auckland apartment auctions was at Barfoot & Thompson's CBD rooms, where 10 apartments were on offer.

They were a good mix too, ranging form a leasehold unit in a building just off the top end of Queen St to a 148 square metre, three bedroom unit on the CBD fringe.

However, there was a surprisingly small number of people at the auction itself considering the number of properties on offer, although telephone bidders were also active on several properties.

Only two of the 10 apartments on offer were sold under the hammer, with the rest being passed in for sale by negotiation.

Three of those that were passed in received no bids.

The apartments that sold were a two bedroom unit (48 square metres) in the Zest building on Nelson St, which is a mainstay with residential property investors.

Although there was only one person bidding, it sold under the hammer for $450,000.

The other property to sell was a 39 square metre studio in a building on Whitaker Place.

There was keen competition for this unit from several bidders and it sold for $222,000.

Up at Ray White City Apartments, this week's auction was small but perfectly formed, with just two units on offer and both selling under the hammer.

One was a one bedroom, leasehold apartment in the Scene Three building on Beach Rd that went for $130,000 and the other was a studio unit in the Avoka building on Day St, which is facing potential remediation issues.

It went for $175,000.

The full results from both auctions, with details of all properties including those that didn't sell, are available on our Auction Results page.

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63 Comments

One hundred percent success rate at Ray White City Apartments auction.

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OMG wow this is amazing :-)
Thank you for sharing.

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@ DGZ and Zach...

Just wondering, do you have separate keyboards on each of your sides of the bed or do you take turns on the same one?

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I'm always on the right side of the bed ;-)

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Fell out of the bed laughing at you two spruikers ! Definitely entertaining the Zach DoubleD show

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Hey DGZ/ Zackary, Just going back to this article where the Auction results were just as poor with only a 20% Auction clearance rate! as "Only two of the 10 apartments on offer were sold under the hammer".

Try to spin that one. :P

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Perhaps you two lovebirds can tell Barfoot & Thompson what they're doing wrong? Maybe it's their auction technique, and if they just sort that all the apartments will sell?

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Low volume statistics are of limited value

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Let me check your math, Yes 2 sold out of two, correct thats 100%.
Same last week or next week?

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They are talking about a different auction to the one in the article.

Would be nice to know the volume Ray White moved with a 100% clearance rate. If it was 10+, this datapoint is quite valuable.

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Was RW the agency that FairGo caught on camera awhile back to do with running a home inspection pre sale service through their own selling agent ??? I am unsure maybe RW could clarify ??

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Happy thoughts Peter!

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I see that three apartments received no bids yet in the auction results page all are listed as "passed in". To me no bids is valuable information. Also the highest bid would be interesting too. Agents are always very cagey when you ask them what the highest bid at an auction was. I bought a house that failed at auction and figured that I would offer a little more over the highest bid whereupon the agent almost refused to present it because it was insulting. Yet I was offering more than anyone else had offered?

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They don't tell you the price - but get all offended - when you make an offer!

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That's so unfair Zach
You should have had your low ball offer accepted
What a crazy world we live in when a spruiker is refused

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Is it my imagination or are all the dross investment properties suddenly hitting the market? Certainly seem to be the case around me in the Eastern Bays. Most I wouldn't touch with a barge pole as they need extensive building work doing to them in the coming years and we all know the costs there. A few people have probably missed the boat in achieving peak prices.

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Well that's not going to put much of a dent in to all the property listings that are still building up on TradeMe, which is currently at 11104 listings for Auckland.

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it just keeps climbing!

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It is seriously impressive how fast it is rising, particularly over the last couple of days.

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Listings rising fast and auction sale rates staying low through March...yet I haven't seen a dramatic drop in prices yet (at least in central Auckland), more of a soft plateau/slump. Question is, will the downward pressure continue and result in significantly lower prices in six months time, or will the status quo continue (slugglish sales but vendors still holding out for and eventually getting 30%ish over CV)?

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Its amazing that a lot of the listings with a price that were bought last year and marked up by 200k are not selling. Looks like the days of buy and flip are over...

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Some examples would be good, please moneyphobe.

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these failed at auction https://www.trademe.co.nz/property/insights/address/Auckland/Auckland-C…
https://www.trademe.co.nz/property/insights/address/Auckland/Auckland-C…
Plenty more are listed for sale on trademe bought last year and with 200k added to list price.

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all those zest apartments were around 200k in 2013.

now 400k plus.

same trend starting in welly as students start living in tents and rents rise.

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This is nothing. Wait until late Spring 2017 when the true drooling and spitting panic begins.

Denial and excuses will prevail for a time (Easter, School Holidays, Winter) but, come Oct/Nov, it will be inescapable to all but the most genetically unfortunate that the housing market - soon to be followed by the entire national economy - is in an unarrestable collapse.

You think we have a large influx of inventory now? Wait until reality sinks in. Wait until November.

And that's why Bill has set the election for September.

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I attended the top of the Canadian Housing Market, so you didn't have to
https://onbeyondinvesting.com/blogs/blog/i-attended-the-top-of-the-cana…

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Good article AJ. But I saw this all seven or eight years ago. House prices have more than doubled since then. How is now different? What needs to be done to avoid it? But more importantly, how can I 'short' it?

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What needs to be done to avoid it?

See Vancouver's 15% stamp duty on foreign purchases. It's putting the brakes on because it means sales are driven more by what local incomes can afford - as they should be.

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Worse there's Kevin O'Leary running for leader of Ca Conservative party
Now he's a spruiker !
Sold Mattel his DUD business

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To give a comparable view on property listings. Toronto , another city currently in the midst of a speculative bubble, has just 5400 current listings. That is for the Greater Toronto area , which has a population over 5 million. When speculators drive the market ,real estate agents the likes of DGZ flip properties, prices increase, fundamentals no longer matter, when speculators ( and real estate agents) leave the market, prices initially gradually fall, property news articles become increasingly opaque ,listings rise, and rise. fundamentals matter. Domestic debt fueled the Auckland property market.

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Cow pat The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is the most populous metropolitan area in Canada. As of the 2016 census, it has a population of 6,417,516, and has a census metropolitan area population of 5,928,040.
Crazy city try driving the 401

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In the light of all the above what seems quite reprehensible is the Herald's coverage over the last few days, spruiking the property ownership dream for those at the lower end, the ones who could well be hardest hit.

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Rotorua, the NEW Queenstown... million dollar apartment. Who'd have thunk?
http://nzh.tw/11823237

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Whoo, fancy. Next they'll be thinking they don't smell like egg farts.

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There is no denial that the Auckland property market has been very slow, for months now, not too much change in the values, yet! however it's now towards end of March and the arrow is still pointing down, how long can the dam hold for? Will be interesting to see if the property dam will cave in and fully flood the market.

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This is supposed to be March madness. It's supposed to be going bananas. Where is the price explosion never before seen in Auckland?

The hot asian money spigot has been closed and the penny is beginning to drop.

I feel bad for the people that Ron Hoy Fong and Gary Lin swindled into buying near the peak.

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Hanging in there, waiting for what looks like inevitable price drops.

Guessing it will be another 12-18 months until a decent improvement on AKL central(ish) suburb prices.

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The March prediction explosion has back fired!
Unfortunately casualties are inevitable.

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No, no, Wiseguy. The explosion will come now in April..or May.. or June..won't it? Where's Ted, by the way!

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Hopefully your not anywhere close to the explosion, not sure about your Ted!

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If I could easily short property, at this point I would!

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What tools are available in the NZ market to this end?

In the vancouver market there were residential housing rich ETF's which you could take a short position in...

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Property markets don't crash like sharemarkets - it's all in slow motion. The Auckland market appears to be rolling over and I expect to see significantly lower prices by this time next year.

Headwinds are; rising international interest rates, election this year, weakening economy, increasing new supply, political pressure to turn off immigration tap, Auckland creaking infrastructure.

The time to buy will be when the Herald predicts further catastrophic falls and Tony Alexander is saying residential property is a bad investment.

The "Boom and Bust" market song has been sung many times around the world and, contrary to what we are told, NZ is no different.

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Why do you think that will be the time to buy?

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I'm being a bit flippant but that will probably represent the most pessimistic part of the cycle.

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Thanks! Going to be hard to know where the bottom is - I guess it's rare to be so lucky.

I am hoping to get in once things have come back down to earth.

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Could be a long wait and probably a tougher tax regime. Why not start a proper business?

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I just want to buy a house to live in, not to be a real estate investor and make lots of money, so tax is not an issue for me. I just don't want to buy a house when it's overpriced AKA a terrible waste of money, which it currently is.

In meantime I am investing in index funds #productiveinvesting

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You know you're a desperate FHB when you trawl the interest.co.nz comments every day asking random (kind) strangers for advice.

But I guess that's the price of being born in 1988.

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Can you sum this up in laymans terms?

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Google "Ray Dalio - debt super cycle".
The real question is are we at 'the end' of a debt super cycle.
If so, the results will be like nothing any of us have experienced in our lifetimes.

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What I am contending is that there are limits to spending growth financed by a combination of debt and money. When these limits are reached, it marks the end of the upward phase of the long-term debt cycle. In 1935, this scenario was dubbed “pushing on a string”.

https://www.ft.com/content/b41813dc-c028-11e5-846f-79b0e3d20eaf

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/23/ray-dalio-shares-his-thoughts-on-populis…

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I completely agree - there are limits as history demonstrates.

My personal question has been how will I know when we are nearing "the end" of a debt super cycle. The answer to this question in my opinion was clarified when negative interest rates were required in many countries just to keep the system going a bit longer. I knew then we must be getting close to the end of a super cycle.

Some may call me cynical but I believe a collapse of some sort must result, accompanied by massive deleveraging - whether by default or debt forgiveness. Then a new system will be introduced to "save the day".

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It's probably better to find someone to advise you directly. For buying in Auckland I wouldn't bother as a FHB. Most of the entry level houses are expensive crap. Other parts of the country you need to look around and base decisions on the local market.

If you haven't seen a mortgage broker you should see one to see how much money you could borrow. The amount offered by the bank is a maximum and the amount you should avoid borrowing. This at least enables you to go around and see what houses are like in your market, and if a house is interesting put in a low offer.

RE agents will come up with all sorts of gibberish. RE agents are your enemy and they are shove their BS where the sun doesn't shine. Make sure you ask for disclosures on the property before you make any offers.

When you make a low ball offer the RE agent make state some BS about the property being worth more. Of course deny that by saying it isn't worth that much and then reduce your offer. If you aren't putting the RE agent and buyer through pain then you aren't doing it right. Any seller is trying to shaft you at the top of the bubble.

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History shows the best time to buy is 4-5 yrs post the previous peak, so earliest to look would be late 2020.

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Agree MJA - from the reading I've done, and if we do have a bubble, the fall is usually somewhat symmetrical to the rise. So I think that if you can wait 5years, wait 5 years!

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Property Market indeed crash.
It happened at NZ in 70s, recently happened in US. Remember the big short?
My idea is the market will adjust to the fair price even faster than we suspect now.

People always underestimate the risk of such unthinkable incidents,
but it happens quite regularly and should not be overlooked.

I don't think anyone benefits from the market crash, but everyone seems to be in denial.

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Buy in gloom sell in boom!!!or even better buy and hold

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I think we're pretty much in the same position as Canada's Vancouver but at least they've been able to put some controls in place with the Foreign Buyers Tax.

Here's the opinion of an Ex-Wall Street Trade on the subject and what he predicts will happen to the housing market that could affect us all.
http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/899968067635

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I think the better quality houses will still get good prices. It is the aged investment properties that I wouldn't want to be owning. They could easily be trading 20% below where their owners thought they were.

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Deja vu, people expects massive drop but never does as economy slowly picks up again in the next 4-5 years.

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I don't expect a massive drop just a bit of reality coming into the market.

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