– A renovated Khandallah house sold for just over $1.8m with a record 24 registered bidders.
– The auction saw intense competition, with the winning bid just $1000 over $1.8m.
– Ray White highlighted auctions’ effectiveness in curbing vendor’s fear of underselling and buyer’s concern of over-capitalisation.
A smartly renovated house in an upmarket Wellington suburb sold under the hammer for just over $1.8 million after pulling in a record number of bidders.
The four-bedroom home on Everest Street, in Khandallah, was marketed by Ray White agents Steve and Leanne Platt and had an RV of $1.34m.
Steve Platt told OneRoof that 22 of 24 bidders who had registered for last week’s auction were in the room, and could see exactly who they were up against.
An opening gambit of $1.3m blew most of the competition away, but Platt said that four determined bidders hung in and slugged it out over the next $500,000.
“The bid was at $1.8m, and the winner added another $1000 and got it,” he said.
Eyeing the competition: The Ray White auction room was packed. Photo / Supplied
The vendors, who had owned the property for over 30 years, were motivated to sell.
OneRoof understands that 24 registered bidders would be a record for an auction in Wellington, exceeding the 22 registered bidders who turned up for a $1 reserve auction in Northland in June.
“We had a lot of interest at the $1.45m to $1.6m mark,” Platt said, adding that some of the buyers in the room had been looking for their next home in Khandallah for as long as a year.
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“The numbers coming through the door [at open homes] were phenomenal, probably 70 groups. I thought it would go well, but I haven’t seen a busier property in my 30-odd years in real estate.”
Platt said the fact that there were few properties for sale in Khandallah had boosted the vendors’ good fortune. The buyers were a local family who planned to stay there for a long time.
“Everyone’s happy, and there hasn’t been too much to be happy about in Wellington for a while,” he said.
Ray White auctioneer Ben East said the agency had made a concerted effort to raise the profile of the sales method in the city, which has long relied on tenders and deadline sales.
Agents say that some buyers have been looking for over a year for the right home in the sought-after suburb. Photo / Supplied
“In the early days you could count auctions on one hand. But since 2022 we’ve done 385 auctions. Our auction success rate is 43% and days on market are 35 compared to 48 for private treaty,” he told OneRoof.
“Buyers buy the property; they don’t buy the method of sale. The key thing an auction does is to curb the vendor’s fear of underselling and the buyer’s fear of over-capitalising.”
Harcourts Team Group Wellington CEO Marty Ritchie said his company has always been a fan of selling by auction. “We’ve always had a focus on auctions. We called about 450 last year,” he said, adding that about 30% of the company’s listings in the region go to auction.
He said that this was not the market to be setting a price – too low and the property sells quickly, too high and buyers are put off.
“We’ve gone from fear of missing out to fear of paying too much. But when you can eyeball your competition [in an auction], you can make the decision [of how much to pay].”
He said the company has scheduled another large auction gala for mid-September to get properties in front of buyers who want to buy now, not in spring or summer.
However, Tommy’s sales director Blair Double said his company preferred fixed sale dates or tenders.
“They still have a date, so there is still some urgency. With a tender, plenty of cash offers do come in, but you’re open to a wider market because you can accept conditional offers.
“In an auction, you can see what the other person is bidding, but in a tender, the owner can generate a greater sale price. If you don’t know what the other bidders’ figures are, then you could get another $10,000 or $100,000.
“We had one this month where the spread was $450,000 between the highest offer and the lowest – and that was for a house in the low $1ms. In an auction, the top bidder might have kept that in their pocket.”
Double said that with a 25% drop in prices in the city, owners have had to realign their thinking on what their property is worth, but that is helped when they see between two and six offers in a tender or deadline sale.
“We’ve done auctions in the past, but currently, we’re more favoured towards the tender,” Double said.