– A near-5ha plot in Massey sold for $18m in a receivership sale.

– The property, with consents for 50 sections, was bought by a veteran developer.

– The new owner must complete trenching, paving and compliance checks with Auckland Council.

A near-5ha plot of development land on Auckland’s northwest fringes recently sold for $18 million in a receivership sale, OneRoof can reveal.

The property on Yelash Road, in Massey, came with consents to create 50 individual sections and had already been hooked up to power, water and fibre services.

Harcourts listing agent Adam Gurr, who did the deal, said his client was “thrilled” with the result, with the property snapped up by an experienced developer for almost double the RV.

The site was snapped up by the previous owner in 2020 for $8m. Photo / Supplied

“It is a unique proposition and required a certain type of buyer,” Gurr told OneRoof.

“To have four tenders for this sort of site, it’s a good result,” he said.

The property was bought in 2020 for $8m by 8 Yelash Limited, a firm which was placed into receivership last year and whose director was businessman Tingsong Qiu.

Gurr was appointed by the liquidator to sell the property earlier this year, and his marketing described it as “a big development site” and a “must sell”.

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“With the owner unable to take it across the finish line, this looks like a case of picking it up and moving through the final steps.”

The level of interest from developers was huge, he said. “I probably got a dozen or so developers, plus a lot of enquiries, and seven site inspections,” he said.

“These were people who were looking for projects of similar sizes. This was an exceptional result; it was attractive because a lot of [the work] had been done.”

The property adjoins Birdwood Heights in the rapidly growing northwest area of Auckland. Photo / Supplied

The site is next door to Birdwood Heights, a subdivision group builders Neil Group and Fletchers have been building for several years

Gurr said the new owner of 8 Yelash Road would need to complete the trenching for the water mains, utilities and fibre connection, pave access to the lots, build raingardens, finish the landscaping, and do final compliance checks with Auckland Council.

“They still have to spend some money to complete the development. That would be at least a few million dollars.”

Gurr said the appeal of finishing the subdivision was that there were many options for selling the sites to a group builder.

In 2021 and 2022, the previous owner was marketing individual sections at 8 Yelash Road for between $650,000 and $725,000, with the listings saying the sites would be ready with services by mid-2022. A year later, other sections were looking for around $600,000 with no mention of completion dates.

Gurr did not know if anyone had bought the sections, telling OneRoof that the $18m sale in June this year did not include any pre-sales from that earlier marketing.

The agent told OneRoof that developers were active in the Auckland market, but there wasn’t much stock.

“They have got budgets of $10m, $20m to spend. It depends on whether they have got the appetite for current zoning, or [land] that is yet to be zoned,” he said.

“My job is hours of piecing together the puzzle to take as much of the guesswork out of the equation.”

He added: “There is nothing else like [Yelash Road] on the market. Maybe when you put an article out, people will come out of the woodwork and say, ‘Hey, mine’s the same’.”

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