GOOD ACTIVITY: Ross Stanway.
Mount Maunganui is enjoying a surge in sales of multimillion-dollar homes this year - including two properties that have sold for more than $5 million.
The most expensive property, 92 Marine Parade, sold for $6.6 million on February 11, according to sales figures from the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand.
The five-bedroom, 663sq m home sits on a 1401sq m site and has a capital valuation (CV) of $5.93 million.
This month, 213A/B Oceanbeach Rd fetched $5.15 million.
The property features a multi-level contemporary home and an original bach on two separate titles, with a combined CV of $4.3 million.
Such is the eagerness of buyers to get their hands on top-end properties in the seaside suburb that some are buying without first viewing their prospective homes.
Recent sales also include a new home on Muricata Ave, a sought-after street one back from the beach, which sold for $2.35 million at auction to a bidder in the United Kingdom.
The purchaser, an expat New Zealander who has previously lived at the Mount, did not physically view the modernist-design home before buying.
Properties in the million dollar-plus category currently account for almost 30 per cent of listings for the Mount on Realestate.co.nz, which carries listings from a variety of real estate companies.
This week, 70 of 239 listings for Mount properties were in this category.
Currently, there are 26 properties listed for $2 million and above in Tauranga; 12 at the Mount and one at Papamoa. The Papamoa property, 209 Papamoa Beach Rd, is listed for $3.3 million.
Number 92 Marine Parade previously broke a record for the highest-priced property in Tauranga when it sold for $8 million in June 2007.
Real estate agency Bayleys was responsible for the latest sale and the multimillion-dollar properties on Oceanbeach Rd and Muricata Ave.
Ross Stanway, chief executive of Realty Services, which owns Bayleys and Eves in the Bay of Plenty and Waikato, said the last few months had seen a lot of activity in the high end of the market, both in Tauranga and at the Mount.
"There are good-quality properties coming on the market, and there are buyers for those properties," he told the Bay of Plenty Times Weekend.
"There have been some perfect match-ups."
People looking at multimillion-dollar homes were discerning buyers, he said.
"There are a small group of buyers in that bracket, but they're generally serious buyers and they know what they want."
Many properties for sale in the top end are for auction or negotiation, but the largest listed price is $6 million for a 560sq m, five-bedroom home on Oceanbeach Rd.
Mr Stanway said some people interested in a property in the $1 million range but who were fairly stretched at that level would consider properties in the $500,000 to $1 million range.
More multimillion-dollar properties selling showed confidence in the real estate market on both sides of the ledger, and there was likely to be some "pull-through effect" in terms of properties under $1 million, he said.
The Mediterranean-inspired home sits on a large 1184sq m site and is marketed by Bayleys' Kay Ganley, who specialises in beachfront property.
Mrs Ganley has worked in the area for 14 years and is the top Bayleys salesperson for the Mount and Papamoa.
"It's probably the most buoyant I've seen it in the top, top end - the $3 million-plus properties," she said.
"The level of inquiries in that category has been pretty phenomenal. It's the most I've seen in a short space of time."
People were also buying for a variety of reasons, she said. "It's a mix of permanent residences and holiday homes. People are also looking to buy here with the intention of coming to live in a few years' time."
Recent clients included a British couple who had flown in from Dubai, where they work, looking for a holiday home at the Mount where they could spend six months of the year.
Mrs Ganley said such top-end interest is a reflection of the vibrancy of the Mount and its abundance of cafes, shops and restaurants.
"People are coming here who haven't been here for a while and discovering it's not a sleepy little village. They're finding this vibrant village and want to be close to it and part of it. It offers anything that any big city does."
Harcourts Tauranga managing director Simon Martin said activity in the top end had increased on both sides.
"There are more buyers, more sellers. It's just a sign of the times with the activity in the economy increasing. People have got more confidence so they're more prepared to invest in more expensive properties."
More multimillion properties selling helped boost confidence across the whole housing market, he said.
"People seeing more $1 million homes selling impacts on both sides of the ledger, with both buyers and sellers in the under $1 million price range becoming far more interested in the market place."
The demographic of buyers was "the same as it has always been" - expats, Aucklanders, rural people and others from within a two-hour radius of Tauranga, but with one common factor: they were all "wealthy people".
Other top sales this year revealed in Real Estate Institute figures include 271 Papamoa Beach Rd ($1.85 million, CV $985,000), 173 Marine Parade ($1,587,000, CV unspecified), 20 Ngarata Ave ($1,530,000, CV $1.08 million), 11A Grace Ave ($1.2 million, CV $850,000).
Mr Stanway said an influx of holidaymakers during the summer months helped fuel the growth in this year's top-end sales at the Mount, but he believed the suburb's million dollar-plus market was showing no signs of slowing.
"There's every indication that those levels of inquiry for good-quality properties in that top end will continue."