Massive land sell off places sizeable chunk of Wanganui on the market

The biggest single corporate sell-off of Wanganui real estate is placing a substantial chunk of the city and its surrounding areas – including 16 lots of commercial, industrial and residential property - on the market for sale.

The array of land parcels is owned by an Auckland-based investment company which has held the substantial portfolio of properties for almost two decades, but is now looking at utilising land sale proceeds for other investment opportunities.

The Wanganui portfolio is being marketed by Bayleys Wanganui through an auction taking place in Wanganui on May 14. The auction will be the biggest of its type ever held in the city – with no auction ever before combining commercial, industrial and residential land and building offerings on this scale.
Realising the crowd-pulling potential for the large-scale corporate sell off auction, three other separate and unrelated investors have also added properties into the day’s proceedings.

Bayleys Wanganui branch manager Ian Barns said the main corporate vendor was closely involved with New Zealand’s real estate market through his professional capacity, and was acutely aware of where pricing levels had shifted to over the past two years.

Mr Barns said that as a result of the vendor’s intricate understanding of national real estate values, he was confident the auction would provide some sharply priced deals.

“Certainly, in the 20-plus years I have been selling real estate in Wanganui, I can’t remember anything of this size or scope coming onto the market in one offering. It is by far the biggest such grouping of real estate we have seen placed up for sale,” said Mr Barns.

Among the properties on offer are:

• Two commercial premises in Ridgway Street in the heart of Wanganui’s ‘old town’ CBD. Both premises are tenanted – one by a legal firm and the other by a curtain shop - and are surrounded by food and beverage establishments and professional services offices.
• Five variously sized bare land lots on the high profile main arterial routes of Heads Road and Somme Parade in the manufacturing and industrial sector of Wanganui. The land sizes range from 551 square metres up to 2060 square metres, and are suitable for multiple use purposes.
• Two blocks of five one-bedroom flats in the seaside residential suburb of Castlecliff.
• Seven bare sections – ranging in size from 466 square metres to 2881square metres, also in the Castlecliff suburb.
• A sizeable 8225 square metre section across five titles in the Wanganui suburb of Springvale.
• Six bare sections – ranging in size from 440 square metres to 3120 square metres - in the residential suburb of Aramoho.
• Three bare sections near the township of Maxwell approximately 20 minutes drive north of Wanganui.
• A 10,178 square metre bare section lifestyle block at Mangamahu approximately 50 kilometres inland from Wanganui.

“The portfolio was purchased around 1990 and into the mid-1990s at the time when there was a sizeable sell off of real estate assets by local bodies and former Government-owned or administered infrastructure agencies throughout New Zealand,” Mr Barns said.

“At that time, the owner and now vendor was like many Wanganui business operators and residents who shared a vision for the longer-term prosperity of the city and surrounding districts. Circumstances have obviously changed during the intervening decades, and the vendor is looking to exit their presence from the region.”

Mr Barns said the May 14 auctions would provide an excellent opportunity for Wanganui and Manawatu-based investors to pick up one or several of the sites and, using ‘local knowledge’, potentially develop or refurbish the properties to capitalise on demand for real estate within Wanganui - at a time when the general property market was sluggish as investors patiently waited for the Government’s budget announcement next month.

Mr Barns also predicted that budding first-time home owners in the city would be interested in some of the residential land-only offerings, which had the potential to be combined into sizeable building sites in well established suburbs.