The site of the cream coloured vacant building at 6 Wolfe St generated a $5.5m sale price. Photo / Supplied
A property which sold at a land value of $19,298 per sq m, was one of three Auckland CBD properties to sell under the hammer at Bayleys' latest Total Property auction.
The 285sq m freehold site at 6 Wolfe St, with a brick warehouse building dating back to the early 1990s, was sold for $5.5 million by Nick Thompson, Robert Platt and James Chan of Bayleys' Auckland office.
Platt says the property has been vacant since it was acquired by a Hong Kong investor in 1995 and its purchase by an Auckland-based buyer returns it to New Zealand ownership.
Chan traveled to Hong Kong to translate and assist the vendors through the auction which they watched on Facetime early in the morning Hong Kong time.
Bidding started at $3m and competition from three parties pushed the price up to $4.6m when bidding stalled. Negotiations with parties in the room and with the vendors resulted in the bidding being reopened at $5.5m and the property sold under the hammer at that price.
"The purchaser's intentions at this stage are to refurbish the building into good quality character retail and office space and we are already receiving inquiry from interested tenants," says Platt. "Any refurbishment or redevelopment will require a resource consent."
Across the road, demolition work is underway on a 3313sq m development site with frontage to Wolfe, Federal and Albert Sts which Thompson and Platt sold late last year. Platt says a high-rise, mixed-use development is planned for this site which will have a hotel component.
"This lower Albert St area which was previously a fairly run-down corner of the CBD, with a cluster of vacant and decaying buildings, is now undergoing a major rejuvenation with a variety of projects recently completed or underway," he says.
"This is being driven by a strong commercial property market and the shortage of well positioned CBD development land as well as its closeness to Queen St, the waterfront, the Britomart Transport hub and the nearby Commercial Bay office and retail development currently being undertaken by Precinct Properties."
Also attracting good bidding at the Total Property auction was Unit A101/2A-2B Courthouse Lane, a fully leased 314sq m unit in a high profile corner position in the Chancery building at the entrance to Chancery Square. It sold for $2,020,000 at a 6.63 per cent yield by Damien Bullick, Ken Hu and Alan Haydock of Bayleys Auckland.
The Sushi Room, which claims to have the CBD's largest sushi train, has occupied the 187sq m upper level of the two-storey premises since 2011. The ground floor is tenanted by The Vault gift shop and a Chinese restaurant scheduled to open next month having taken over a cafe tenancy. The property has a weighted average lease term of four years.
At the smaller end of the CBD market, a unit titled property in the Waldorf Apartment building at 19 Anzac Ave encompassing 11 car parks and 20sq m laundry room sold for $790,000 at a 5.7 per cent yield. Marketed by Andrew Wallace and Genevieve Thompson-Ford, the unit has an 11-year lease from March 2017 to NZ Waldorf Apartments Management Ltd.
Other properties to sell under the hammer at the auction were:
• Unit 8, 215 Rosedale Rd, Albany – comprising 208sq m of retail, mezzanine office and warehouse, and storage space plus four exclusive car parks in Rosedale Plaza, it sold for $850,000 at a 5.29 per cent yield. The unit has a five-year lease from September 2016 to West Shell, a specialist fishing equipment and apparel retailer, and was sold by Adam Curtis, Damian Stephen and Adam Watton, Bayleys North Shore Commercial.
• Unit 7A, 21 Corinthian Drive, Albany – an 87sq m corner premises in the 16-unit Orchard Park Retail Hub which sold for $1.15m at a 4.78 per cent yield through Meng He, Steven Liu and Eddie Zhong of Bayleys North Shore Commercial. A 10-year lease to Double Happy Chinese restaurant commenced in September 2017.
• Unit D, 6 Jack Conway Avenue, Manukau - a 547sq m industrial building with two levels of office and showroom at the front and high stud warehousing at the rear, with separate roller door access; that was sold for $1.45m by Owen Ding and Simon Davies of Bayleys Auckland. The top office floor is leased until February 2023 at $30,000 per annum.