Why buyers went berserk: Plaster home in double grammar zone sparks 220-bid auction frenzy

The owners of the four-bedroom house on Brookland Place, in Remuera, walked off with an extra $360,000 as bidders pushed the price well above the declared reserve to just over $2.35 million.

It’s not the only home to have felt the heat in recent weeks. On Wednesday, a five-bedroom villa on Ferryhill Road, in neighbouring Epsom, sold under the hammer for $5.555m after 72 bids, while on August 12 a four-bedroom property on Belmont Terrace, in Remuera, got $2.539m after 140 bids.

In a market where many properties are passing in at auction without a single bid, the sales are remarkable.

Bayleys national auction manager Conor Patton told OneRoof that the house at Brookland Place had attracted more bids than any other property sold under the hammer in the last 12 months.

Patton said that the common thread with all three properties was that the vendors had set realistic reserves.

The strongest auction results, he said, tended to occur when buyers could see clear competition from multiple parties and had confidence that a property was genuinely for sale. In those circumstances, strong social proof often fuelled bidding well beyond the reserve.

He said vendors who trusted the auction process to determine market value were more likely to achieve standout results. By contrast, auctions could lose momentum when sellers set overly ambitious reserves and negotiated privately with the highest bidder instead of letting the process play out.

He said that the Belmont Terrace home was called on the market at $2.105m, with the vendor ultimately getting $434,000 more than they were willing to sell the property at.

Asked if a lot of vendors were setting “overly optimistic” reserves, Patton said: “Look there’s a spectrum. It’s not across the board, but there are some.”

Bayleys agent Steve Koerber, who sold the Brookland Place and Belmont Terrace homes, said there was an interesting mix of buyers at both auctions.

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The Brookland Place property was snapped up by a family who wanted a home in Auckland’s prized double grammar school zone.

Koerber said the number of registered bidders for the auction went from two to seven once notice went out that the sale date was being brought forward. “That’s a clear demonstration of the power of being realistic and bringing an auction forward.”

Koerber said it was surprising that the plaster-clad home got more than what a similar property across the road fetched in December last year. “That was basically the brick version of Brookland Place.”

He had previously marketed the Belmont Terrace house in 2023, but the highest bid he got at auction back then was $2.2m, and the vendors took the property off the market. “The market has gone down [since then], and our result went up by a lot,” he said.

The house at Ferryhill Road was sold by Bayleys agent Lorraine Young. Like the Belmont Terrace and Brookland Place residences, it was in double grammar zone but it boasted a more modern finish, having been built in 2015.

Patton said the opening bid of $3.5m was “aspirational or optimistic”, and it wasn’t until the price reached $5.1m that he declared the property on the market.

He described the auction as “particularly ferocious” after that point. “That created a serious flurry of activity. People knew that it was seriously for sale. Other people wanted it, and they had the capacity and the desire, so they bid extremely strongly.”

Young said the vendors had paid $5m for the house in 2022. “A couple of agents didn’t think they would get their money back. But it is a quality home in a special character area.”

She said the vendors had done some work to freshen it up and had built a cricket and football area at the front of the home for their children.

Richie Lewis, manager of Ray White’s AT Realty, which covers South Auckland and the CBD, told OneRoof that some properties in his patch were attracting large numbers of bids – especially those with $1 reserves. “Once it’s announced as on the market, [buyers] disconnect from price discipline and it all becomes about winning. There are unique dynamics that occur inside the auction room,” he said.

Harcourts Christchurch auctioneer Ned Allison told OneRoof that a great auction was not necessarily defined by the number or size of the bids. Some buyers might increase their offers by just $500 at a time, while in other cases only a handful of bids were needed for a property to sell for $100,000 or more above expectations.

In terms of bids, the biggest auction he had done in recent weeks involved a three-bedroom home on Stanbury Avenue, in Somerfield. Two first-home buyers battled it out over 65 bids, with the hammer coming down at $798,000.

He said school zoning was often the difference between a home that sat on the market and one that sold well, with renovations and presentation also helping to attract buyers. “It’s quite location-driven, but presentation is a factor too,” he said.

He added that some townhouses were sitting on the market for longer periods. “We’ve got our townhouse market, which is massively oversupplied. They’re very hard to sell, and a lot of the time, owners are going backwards on them.”

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