Double whammy for Omaha baches
Beach town enjoys a boom in luxury bach sales
Aluxury bach in the wealthy beach town of Omaha sold under the hammer this week for $8.55 million, on the same day the house directly behind it was snapped up for more than $3m.
Both sales reflected renewed confidence at the top end of the market, and come as new OneRoof figures show the average property value in Omaha is now $21,000 above its preslump peak.
The auction sale of the fivebedroom bach on Taumata Rd followed strong buyer interest at the open homes, with more than 50 groups looking at the property over three weekends.
The five-bedroom Andrew Patterson-designed home sits on a 1218sq m beachfront section — huge by Omaha standards — and has a 2021 CV of $7.5m. The smaller threebedroom bach behind it sits on an 828sq m section and has a CV of $3.9m.
The beachfront bach was marketed for sale by New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty agents Patrick McAteer and Natalie Newton.
McAteer told OneRoof that 30 people turned up to Thursday’s onsite auction but in the end only one bidder put up his hand.
“Bidding opened at $7m. We took that bidder into the room [for negotiation]. After about 40 minutes the owner accepted $8.55m and the property was announced withdrawn and sold.
“It’s a really good result to be $1.05m above the CV.”
He said a lot of the buyer interest in the property in the lead-up to the auction was conditional. “A good number of people had Omaha properties to sell,” he said.
“But there were also people who were looking at Omaha for the first time, they came from far afield, even from Queenstown.”
He added: “These waterfront properties don’t come up very often. This one was beautifully renovated and had unobstructed views of the water.”
He would not comment on the identity of the buyer. Bayleys agents Joneen Smith and Victoria Turner, who were marketing the bach directly behind McAteer’s, also declined to comment on the identity of their buyer, although they did say price expectations had been above CV.
McAteer told OneRoof that interest in the beach town had boomed since the opening of the new Pu¯hoi highway, which cut travel times to Auckland to well under an hour. His company had also seen a pick-up in interest from overseas buyers since last month’s election.
McAteer’s auction result is the highest for Omaha this year and signals a return to peak prices. The overall Omaha record-holder is a fourbedroom luxury bach on Kutai Lane, which fetched $9.1m in March last year in an off-market deal. McAteer said that other beachfront properties might still beat that.
“Beachfront has become more desirable year on year. You could see Omaha hit $10m, there’s definitely the potential to hit that,” he said.
Listings in Omaha have improved in recent weeks, with Sir John Key’s former bach one of the new properties to hit the market.
The four-bedroom bach at 43 Success Court is for sale by way of deadline treaty and has a CV of $5.4m. It sits on 1000sq m-plus of beachfront land.