‘Buyers are back’: Five-time mayor sells Cheltenham home for well above price hopes

The five-time mayor of the City of Moorabbin and City of Kingston has sold his family’s home after 50 years of ownership for a staggering sale price above expectations. SEE MORE.

22 Booker St, Cheltenham sold at auction for $1.565m.

A Cheltenham abode sold for $140,000 above the seller’s price hopes at its Saturday morning auction.

The four-bedroom house in Melbourne’s southeast at 22 Booker St had a reserve price of $1.425m and a $1.35m-$1.45m price guide, but it was offloaded for $1.565m under the hammer.

Seller Ron Brownless, who was five-time mayor for the City of Moorabbin and City of Kingston, he and his wife were celebrating the auction result with friends, neighbours and locals with a glass of champagne in the backyard.

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“We’ve made a decision, and we’re happy with the new buyers,” he said.

“They’ve got a young family, and I think it’s great. It is a family home.”

Mr Brownless said he’d lived in the home for 51 years and became involved with the community in the 1980s.

“This house has a lot of those memories … we had lots of meetings here at home,” he said.

“(We have) a lovely backyard that we enjoy with natives and some of them have come from citizenship ceremonies we did.”

The large family room at the rear of the property.

The lounge and dining area at the front of the abode.

He added that he had enjoyed mowing the lawns in the backyard as it was where he used to meditate and make decisions.

“We had a cricket pitch in the middle for the kids to play cricket that’s gone, and we’ve just planted it into a garden,” he said.

Buxton Mentone director Wesley Belt said the auction went “off its head” and the house sold to a young family with two kids relocating from a Southbank apartment, with the underbidder only having seen the abode that day.

The paved area perfect for entertaining.

The expansive backyard with a manicured lawn.

The auction began with a vendor bid of $1.35m and was shortly followed by a $1.4m bid from the crowd of onlookers.

Offers rose in $5000-$10,000 increments until the property sold.

Mr Belt said he had sold two homes for well above their reserve prices under the hammer already this year.

“We’ve reached the peak of the interest rates … the buyer volume we’ve had in the last 12 weeks has, no exaggeration, quadrupled,” he said.

“The buyers are back.”

The kitchen adjacent to the family room.

He added that there were a lot of first-home buyers in the market looking for family homes priced between $1m-$2m.

Sitting on a 782sq m block, the residence has three living zones and double garage.

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Originally published as ‘Buyers are back’: Five-time mayor sells Cheltenham home for well above price hopes