Slow Start To Auction Season

Sun Herald

Sunday February 10, 2008

By Sally Croxton

THERE was thunder, torrential rain and the buzz of people making offers outside the auction rooms but inside the gavel was silent.

The first PRD nationwide Port Stephens auction of 2008 was held in Nelson Bay on the Tomaree Peninsula yesterday, one of only two locations in the Hunter named last month by property researcher Terry Rider as among 12 NSW hot spots for buying property this year with the potential for substantial capital gain. The other was Muswellbrook in the Upper Hunter.

There were plenty of bargains and stunning Port Stephens beach properties to be had among the 18 that went under the hammer at the Marina Resort, Magnus Street.

Two sold, both of them within a few steps of a beach. The first was an attractive three-bedroom, two-bathroom, double garage seven-year-old townhouse in a complex with a swimming pool at 11/8 Ala Moana Way, Fingal Bay, which sold before auction for $370,000.

The other sale, made immediately post-auction, was a 30-year-old second floor two-bedroom front unit directly opposite Shoal Bay Beach in Shoal Towers at 6/11 Shoal Bay Road, which made $440,000 and was the only property to get a bid from the floor.

The remainder failed to sell but PRD Port Stephens principal Bruce Gair said the buzz outside the auction room was of buyers making bids within 15 minutes of a property being passed in. He was confident several would sell within days.

Among these was a renovated older-style waterfront property at 93 Foreshore Drive, Salamander Bay, where Mr Gair said he had "received a substantial offer from a fellow from America".

There were several other waterfronts on offer including four in a superb new block of apartments, Karma Waters, at 125 Soldiers Point Road, Soldiers Point which were bought by a buyer now in receivership, who paid deposits but could not complete the sales.

Three were passed in without a bid with a vendor bid of $1.1 million on the fourth, Number 8. Mr Gair said there was post-auction interest in three of them. Prices had initially started out at $1.9 million and "the guy who defaulted had exchanged on one for $1.9 million".

"There's an opportunity to buy them a few hundred thousand dollars cheaper for the first couple that sell and then the pressure comes off a bit," he said.

© 2008 Sun Herald

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