Bayleys sells 49% of homes at Auckland auctions, 83% in Hamilton

Property

Prices of Auckland homes auctioned by Bayleys ranged from $140,000 for Ponsonby studio to $2.7 million for St Heliers house on large section

27th Feb 16, 5:02am by Greg Ninness

Bayleys sold just under half the properties auctioned in Auckland and the Waikato this week. Of 51 marketed for sale by auction, 25 sold, 25 were passed in and one was withdrawn from sale.

In the Waikato five of the six homes auctioned in Bayleys' Hamilton rooms were sold under the hammer.

In the Waikato prices ranged from $405,000 for a classic, three bedroom 1950s bungalow in Hamilton to $910,000 for a four bedroom house with a pool on a lifestyle block in Cambridge.

In Auckland residential auction prices ranged from $140,000 for a studio unit leased to the Quest hotel in Ponsonby, to $2.7 million for a four bedroom house on a 1080 square metre site in St Heliers.

See below for Bayleys full auction results with photos and details of all properties, including those that didn't sell.

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25 Comments

by CJ099 | 27th Feb 16, 9:28am 1456518498

Wow less then 50% clearance rate for Auckland auctions! Well there's certainly going to be interesting times ahead. I'm guessing that this will be a continuing trend until Vendors realise that it would probably be best to sell at 'priced' or 'negotiation'.

by gordon | 27th Feb 16, 10:11am 1456521072

My relation who has had a prime three quarters of an acre property on the market for 14 weeks has still not sold. Harbour views, home with attached rental property and consent for cutting into three lots. Times are a changing.

by CJ099 | 27th Feb 16, 10:57am 1456523845

It will sell, just needs to be at a realistic price. A property is only worth what people are willing to pay for it.

by Penguin | 27th Feb 16, 5:07pm 1456546031

That level is lower than I would have expected. As Barfoots said 3/4 months ago the sellers need to be more realistic than they have been.

by CJ099 | 27th Feb 16, 7:14pm 1456553670

Yes totally agree. I think all the AKL Real Estate Agents have been pushing their property vendors to put their property on auction for the promise that the Chinese buyers will return. Though anyone who keeps on eye on what's happening in the world, should realise that China in particular is cracking down on "capital flight" which is basically drastically restricting funds from leaving their country.
Example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ycytl

And let face it, China was AKL's largest property investor for one reason or another. To be honest I think it is good timing that the market has changed, otherwise we would be just pricing ourselves and our children out of the housing market and not just Auckland.

Plus if things did continue at the crazy AKL house prices; we just end up with a very crime ridden society, with the ever widening gap between the Haves and Have Not's. Plus your children would need to either live abroad or remain at home until their 40 to allow them to save for a home in NZ (Not kidding).

And quality immigrants (The well educated and highly skilled) would drop off as they would decide that NZ was too expensive to live in - surprising how quickly that can happen.

Oh and lastly; when FTB's have finally had enough. The government would probably need to bring in a scheme similar to this: Help to Buy Scheme UK https://www.helptobuy.gov.uk/mortgage-guarantee/how-does-it-work/

Which means that it wouldn't be just the bank of Mum and Dad helping to support FTB's but the rest of us as tax payers would also need to chip in.

So fingers crossed that the AKL property market takes a plunge! Logic dictates that it has too!!

Sorry for the rant but lets not be controlled by greedy Real Estate Agents, who are a major part of the house price problem. Who btw should drop their commission rates to 1% and include marketing - yes that is viable. UK Estate Agents have been providing that rate for years and remain profitable!!!

by SpaceX | 27th Feb 16, 7:58pm 1456556289

People are happy for a society of haves and have nots..as shown by the September 2014 general election which elected more of the same for another 3 years.

by mandalay | 27th Feb 16, 9:22pm 1456561332

Ha! Our most northern purchasers are on their way to buy a property near you, very, very soon! http://www.chinastakes.com/tags.aspx?id=464

"A frothy market in China makes both developers and investors interested in real estate nervous. But with overseas property markets often quite undervalued, Chinese investors are heading offshore to take advantage of fire sale prices."

by CJ099 | 27th Feb 16, 11:08pm 1456567717

Mandalay - I really think you are deluding yourself! The article that you have quoted from (In your provided link) is from 17 June 2009 !!?? You do realise that we are in 2016 and the world market and in particular China has moved on from then and is now taking a completely different stance.

Sending and article link from seven years ago to support your opinion is just down right silly, to put it as politely as I can. Always helps to check the date stamp and you're very much living in the past!

by xelnaga | 28th Feb 16, 6:39am 1456594753

Hah. 2009 indeed! Try harder next time.

by mandalay | 28th Feb 16, 10:08am 1456607313

Well that's embarrassing! Yes, you are correct I should have checked, am usually meticulous on these matters... Interesting thing though, that article came through on an up to date China investment feed I subscribe to... Just goes to show...
That said however, I can't honestly see the money ever stop flowing. There are more billionaires in China than the US. Auckland will remain awash with foreign money until our government makes a definitive decision to stop it, highly unlikely though, with property the only real game in town.

by Penguin | 27th Feb 16, 10:16pm 1456564561

CJ099,
Admittedly there has been a crack down on money going out of China but the problem is the horse had already bolted and so there is already pot loads of money that is already deposited outside China.The IRD and data sharing with the Chinese Govt I think has been quite a sensible policy to pursue. We now know there is no backlog in getting an IRD number. The fear for the Chinese owners of property overseas is that a. They might get a mainland investigation into how those funds got overseas(more than $50k pa.) or b. they could get a wealth tax on those assets held offshore.The NZ Govt is under pressure from the IMF to control AKL house prices and so if prices were to increase substantially from their peak they will introduce additional taxes of some form probably targeted at foreign buyers.

The UK help to buy scheme is not a model I advocate that NZ pursues.It is wrong in many ways and doesn't address the main issues.

by CJ099 | 27th Feb 16, 11:06pm 1456567596

Yes I'm not disputing any of those points and yes there will be a lot of tied up property assets (Most of them left empty) in clusters around AKL. As for the likelihood of more overseas investment in to NZ property market, that might still happen but not in the large scale numbers that was happening before October 2015, hence why there's is a general slowdown and drop in AKL's house prices.

As for the UK help to buy scheme - yes this probably wouldn't work for NZ as we are already way, way over the income to lending proportion.

The UK has always had very strict mortgage lending criteria and their banks won't lend over a reasonable earning ratio. Usually at maximum of 4 x earning. Though NZ banks will allow its customers to get in to huge mortgage debit at 9 x earning!!!!

by mandalay | 28th Feb 16, 10:24am 1456608289

I think you are wrong in your statement that banks will loan up to 9x a household income... I have a number of friends and colleagues who are on good salaries and are only able to borrow max 4-4.5x their household income and that is after a 15-20% deposit ( I am in this category too, working two stable and well payed jobs). The banks may loan 9x earning, for a multi property owner/investor, but certainly not to a FHB.

by CJ099 | 28th Feb 16, 10:13pm 1456650798

Admittedly the banks have had to very much restrict their lending in the last six month. Gone are the days of being able to give up your day job and go in to property if you had some spare capital.

I was quite shocked at how lax the banks are here when it comes purchasing a property, compared to the UK where you need to get a builders report before a bank will provide a mortgage.

Here they tend to disregard an applicants age and the condition of the property (Though I know that some bank have introduced the builders report requirement). But a bank lending without a builders report on the condition of a property was an absolute jaw dropper considering how shoddy most of NZ builds are.

And with the NZ Leaky Home scandal that still lingering to this day.

by CJ099 | 27th Feb 16, 11:12pm 1456567935

Lets see how the housing market pans out in the next six months, as only time will tell what is really happening in the property market given the current economic conditions.

by Malarkey | 28th Feb 16, 2:29pm 1456622988

A true story for your amusement...

I live overseas and recently was FaceTime chatting with an old friend who makes his living buying, 'renovating' and flipping houses in Auckland.

It was inevitable that one of the first things he'd ask me about was the local property market, and he did almost immediately.

So, I told him about all the semi-derelict houses out in what passes for the countryside here, and how they've been abandoned by people who know their fortune lies in the cities. Only the retired and other elderly stayed, but many are now moving closer to young family, medical facilities, or just dying out.

My friend looked shocked, then began breathing hard. He quickly suggested we start snapping up these old homes with a view to renovating and flipping.

It didn't fly when I told him there was no market.

"Don't be so bloody stupid, of course there's a market! They're houses! It's the best investment there is!"

By this time he was actually sweating.

Even explaining how nobody wanted property like that anymore, and the population is decreasing had no effect other than make him angrier.

"You must be a f***ing idiot! It's houses, for f**k's sake! What about immigration?"

Now he was turning red in the face and shaking, so I couldn't resist turning the knife just a liitle more.

"There isn't any immigration. Anyway, people here aren't interested in any of that. They already lost their shirts on a property bubble years ago. Houses are seen as nothing more than a place to go to get out of the rain. Nobody is investing in them because nobody wants more than a house or apartment in the city, and there's no shortage of those. The old places in the country will be left to rot."

My friend got so angry about this that he ended the call. Probably just as well, because he looked about ready for a stroke or coronary.

by Machiavelli | 28th Feb 16, 3:43pm 1456627408

Where do you live?

Your friend sounds like he doesn't understand basic drivers of property prices. I.e. supply and demand. It's unusual for someone making their living from property. He better stick to Auckland.

by Magnum PI | 28th Feb 16, 10:03pm 1456650181

LOL. Most of the people I've ever met in the property game have all the business sense of a stewed prune! They think houses are magical things that aren't affected by stuff
Iike supply and demand. ' 'HOUSE PRICES ALWAYS GO UP!!' '

by steven | 29th Feb 16, 7:03am 1456682609

The problem is it isnt "basic" demand. Plus right now its human behaviour ie greed. That IMHO is the hardest thing to understand much of it in yourself (for some ppl).

by Esprit | 29th Feb 16, 10:25am 1456694739

At an auction on the weekend with a friend of ours who's purchasing a family home, active bidding up to about 1.1M dollars, then the Chinese investor jumps in, outbidding the final family at the auction, ending up buying the place for 1.21. Swagger and almost disinterest from the investor looked like it was the third place they'd bought that day.

by buzby | 29th Feb 16, 2:01pm 1456707682

Some interesting findings at the weekend. Overseas buyers from China had been looking in our area around and after Chinese New Year but not buying at the moment. People paying top dollar were new arrivals from London. People paying a huge amount more for pristine renovated villas than do-ups as most young parents have to have 2 full time salaries to afford Auckland and don't want pressure of renovation. A new trend?

by doublegz | 29th Feb 16, 6:20pm 1456723200

Great news!

by ex agent | 29th Feb 16, 7:54pm 1456728884

The NZ Herald has noted today that a house at the Hobsonville Base bought at a record price of $1.6 Million did not receive one bid at a recent auction. Interesting. Did they pay too much for it last year? I presume they expected people to be all over it. I wonder what next month's data from the REINZ will say? Up or down from January.

by Penguin | 29th Feb 16, 7:59pm 1456729183

The Europeans tend to migrate Nov-Jan that is part of the reason for traditional seasonal strength in Feb/March time when they buy property. £ exchange rate not good for Brit buyers at the moment. BREXIT etc.

by CJ099 | 29th Feb 16, 10:12pm 1456737152

Well with the NZD being too strong and house prices too high, Since we have one of the 4th most expensive city in the world at the moment. That will put off people wanting to move to NZ (or at least Auckland) especially those Europeans who are well educated and with capital.
Why move to a country if it's too expensive to live there?

And for those who are interested in what's happening in Europe and particularly Greece, I suggest you listen to this recent article on the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03k6k0x