The house at 8 Sadgrove Tce sold for $232,000 less than its latest CV. But was it a bargain? Time will tell.
The pre-Christmas real estate market in Mt Albert is far from the hotbed of a year and more ago, and it has taken a couple of old dames stuck in the same families for decades to show there’s life in the old girl yet.
Like much of Auckland, sale volumes have risen a little from the winter depths and more buyers are around. Prices are holding up pretty well, though the heady years of consistent quarterly increases are gone for the moment and auction clearance rates have dropped.
An auction with no bids was a rare event a year ago – and back then often hid an issue like a leaky home – but it became commonplace right across the city in the build-up to the election and in the weeks since.
Real estate companies believe things will pick up in the New Year, prodded by the softening of loan-to-value ratios by the Reserve Bank, and with Government policy moves now well understood.
In the meantime, two Mt Albert homes – one with the same owner for 70 years and the other, a deceased estate, held by a family for nearly 50 years – changed hands this month at prices that would have seemed unimaginable even a couple of decades ago. Yet both sold for much less than their latest council capital values – perhaps reinforcing the point that it’s unwise to put too much trust in CVs as an accurate reflection of market value.
A very modest three-bedroom old bungalow built in the 1940s on 581sq m of land in Rawalpindi St – “bring your toolbox, your gardening gloves and your imagination,” declared the agency advert – was the sort of property that might have drawn a successful bid of $180,000-$200,000 in any number of New Zealand towns. In some of them, rather less than that.
But this is Mt Albert in Auckland. In 1989, the house carried a capital value of $105,000. The latest capital value, set in July this year, was set at $1.04m ($960,000 of that the value of the land) and 10 days ago it sold for $893,000.
It was promoted by the agency as “a total do-up” but, when put against the CV, it was a bargain – which must seem staggering to someone living in Kaitaia, Ngatea or Te Awamutu. To the family that had held it for 70 years, the result was no doubt pleasing; to the new owner, the “totally original features” are surely in line for an overhaul.
Up on the lower northern slopes of the mountain in Sadgrove Tce, the cheapest house in one of Mt Albert’s priciest streets was also facing a different sort of future after 47 years in the hands of one owner.
The latest capital values revealed Sadgrove Tce as the second most expensive street in the suburb after adjacent Summit Dr, and 8 Sadgrove – a tidy enough two-bedroom bungalow with city views on 658sq m – was the cheapest at $1.88m, against the street average of $2.47m.
In the end, after stalling at $1.56m – when a quick chat between the auctioneer and the vendors produced the “now selling” sign – it went for $1.648m, down $232,000 on its 2017 CV,
A bargain? Who knows. But by the end of next year, it will be a very different house with a very different valuation.
Bruce Morris
