The brick and tile house is just 91sq m but sits on a 607sq m section.
"It was just the section they were buying really, the section values are shooting up," said Barfoot & Thompson agent Scott Haydon. It was his biggest sale in the area for a home outside of the zone for any of Auckland's grammar schools. He had expected it to sell for closer to $900,000. "It was a bit of a shock, to be honest."
The owner had lived at the home for 40 years and had moved to a rest home in Rotorua to be close to her daughter.
Mr Haydon said the new owner had not yet decided what he wanted to do with the house - renovate or build again.
The three-bedroom, one-bathroom Gisborne house, at 14 Cambridge Tce in the suburb of Kaiti - about 2.9km from the centre of town - had a value of $114,000 and sold for $43,000 less than that. It sits on a 673sq m section.
The 1969 ex-state house had been rented for $200 a week for the past 10 years to the same tenant and was bought by an investor from Nelson.
Bayleys Gisborne manager Karen Raureti said: "On those figures, [it] generates an annual return of 14.6 per cent - that's more than three times the current 12-month deposit rates with the big banks, where you're lucky to get 4.5 per cent interest."
She said the sale was far from an anomaly. "We've seen a lot of 10 per cent-plus rental yields coming through for residential investment stock selling over the past year."
There have been homes that have sold much more cheaply in recent years, but they are usually remote and dilapidated.
An ANZ report this year identified New Zealand's "hottest" residential investment locations.
Top of the list - with a rental return of 8.3 per cent - was the Dunedin suburb of Forbury, followed by South Dunedin with a yield of 8.2 per cent.
At the bottom was the Auckland coastal suburb of Castor Bay, delivering a 2.7 per cent return from rents, followed by neighbouring Devonport, where investors could expect rental returns of 2.8 per cent.
Meanwhile, an Auckland do-up featured in the Herald that was marketed using listing photos showing empty bottles in the living room, boxes and furniture blocking the hallways was passed in at auction last week at $1.225 million.
The real estate agent for 35 Grosvenor Rd in Grey Lynn said serious vendors would look past the mess and see the home's value.
Next story: State houses in pricey suburbs empty and deteriorating
