Recently I attended two auction rooms, Professionals Lower Hutt for their Thursday auctions and Harcourts Wellington City’s Friday auctions. Rest assured people, auctions are alive and well in Wellington.
What caught my attention in the Professionals auction room was 6 Poto Road in Normandale, Lower Hutt, a new build that drew an opening bid of $1,000,00, had 28 bids in the bid sequence and then sold under the hammer for $1,460,000.
Listing agent Cheryl Salt says in excess of 50 groups visited the property prior to the auction, with 3 registered bidders and other buyers waiting in the wings. Cheryl was not surprised at the sale price as she had sold others in the area also over $1,000,000. She says she has never been busier and sees no sign of the real estate market contracting, with many active buyers from all buyer segments – first home, locals wanting to upgrade, and overseas buyers wanting to return, all on the hunt for a new home
Tom Lintern, homes.co.nz Chief Data Scientist, says homes.co.nz data shows in the last 12 months the Lower Hutt median HomesEstimate has increased 25.8 % now $732,000, along with 135 million dollar plus sales happening in that time frame
At the Harcourts Wellington city auctions, what caught my eye was an At the Harcourts Wellington city auctions, what was really intresting was an opening bid of $2,000,000 on 99 Jubilee Road, Khandallah, marketed by Julie and Chris Hurley based in Harcourts Khandallh. I personally noted 26 very competitive bids with the rapid rate of bids making keeping count challenging, so maybe one or more bids either side of that number! With the hammer falling at $2,635,000!
Julie shared there were 113 groups through the property prior to auction day and 10 registered bidders on the day, confirming significant interest in ‘high-end’ properties in the area. She says auctions have certainly become more popular with Wellington buyers as they love the transparency of the auction process. It still hurts to miss out on being the successful purchaser but the under bidder can see the competition in the room and walk away at the end knowing what the successful purchaser was prepared to pay.
Our data shows Khandallah currently has a median HomesEstimate of $1.14M, up 12.8% on the last 12 months with 5 council confirmed sales over $2,000,000.
