– Expats purchased an Auckland mansion for $8.3m, $1.2m above its RV.
– The six-bedroom Herne Bay villa attracted significant interest for its privacy and guest accommodation.
– Patrick McAteer noted nearly 50% of sales involved international buyers with residency.
Expats snapped up an Auckland mansion for $8.3 million, one month after it hit the market.
The two-storey Edwardian villa on Sentinel Road, in Herne Bay, fetched $1.2m above its RV, with New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty agents Patrick McAteer and Suzanne Browne inking the deal in May this year.
McAteer declined to say more about the buyers but noted that the property had attracted a lot of interest. “We had a lot of qualified purchasers through the property. We had good competition right down to the very end. We got a good result,” he said.
The six-bedroom gated mansion on Sentinel Road, Herne Bay, had the privacy overseas buyers expect, with extensive outdoor living. Photo / Supplied
NZ Sotheby’s International Realty agents Patrick McAteer and Suzanne Browne at 10A Cremorne, in Herne Bay. Photo / Fiona Goodall
He said buyers at the upper end of the market in Herne Bay were looking for high-spec properties on big plots of land that provided privacy and security.
The appeal of the six-bedroom Sentinel Road property was that it ticked all the above boxes and offered extra accommodation for guests or staff.
McAteer said he and Browne were close to securing buyers for another of their Herne Bay listings, a modern four-bedroom house at 10A Cremorne Street.
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The eight-year-old house, designed by Hoxha Bailey, has an RV of $8m, but McAteer demurred when asked about the vendors’ price expectations.
McAteer welcomed the Government’s loosening of the foreign buyer restrictions for $5m-plus homes. He said he had been showing properties to buyers from the UK and Los Angeles with budgets “well in excess of $10m”.
“Almost 50% of our sales this year have been with internationals, people who have residency,” McAteer said, adding that he and Browne had been urging interested buyers to start working on their residency paperwork as early as last year.
McAteer and Browne are pitching 27 Sentinel Road, in Herne Bay, to the overseas market. Photo / Supplied
“Then they can get on a plane and come to New Zealand and look at properties.”
He did not think the Government’s changes would lead to a stampede of new buyers, but it would give homeowners confidence to list in anticipation of a wider pool of buyers.
“The overseas clientele, in most cases, want New Zealand to add to their portfolio of properties. It’s not a primary residence. The property managers who deal with these high net worth people tell us they are only here for the summer – a maximum of a month,” he said.
“But there are already people here with significant money to purchase above $5m.”
McAteer said that he and Browne were preparing to list two “significant” properties in Herne Bay.
One at 27 Sentinel Road is a renovated four-bedroom villa by Jones Architects and comes with opulent interiors, an outdoor fireplace, a swimming pool, and a pool house. It has an RV of $6.75m, but McAteer said it was too soon to say where the price might land.
McAteer and Browne have sold more than $60m worth of real estate so far this year, including $12.5m for a modern home on Glanville Terrace, Parnell. The pair’s $26m deal at the end of last year for a pair of neighbouring villas on Jervois Road, Herne Bay, was to an American billionaire who has lived in New Zealand for three years.
“The thing that we get excited about is that people we are currently talking to and people we sold to, they’re bringing their investment portfolio and their global networks,” McAteer said.
“We really like that they want to know about the wider community, they want to join the business groups like the Northern Club. They want to know what is going on in the investor landscape and to get a bigger footprint in New Zealand.”