Hoarder house owned by croc hunter sells for $2.45m
A hoarder house once “full of junk,” has sold for a crazy price, while the now deceased owner had a unique Aussie job after responding to an ad in The Daily Telegraph in London in the 1950s.
A dilapidated hoarder house once “full of junk” owned by a former crocodile hunter has sold at a busy auction for $2.45m.
The Woollahra property sold well beyond expectations, selling $600,000 above the $1.85m reserve.
The rundown home was a deceased estate, and had reportedly been vacant full with “feral,” junk for around two years.
Lead agent Jack Taylor of Ray White Woollahra said he was not expecting such a big result.
“I thought we would get good competition in the high ones (million dollars), but there was just a few parties that really wanted it,” he said.
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It took two weeks and cost around $30,000 to clean out the junk in the home, Mr Taylor said.
“The gentleman was living there for a long time, he was a bit of a hoarder in the house, he passed away a year ago in a care home,” he said.
“We cleared it out in December and have been working on it for about two years,” he said.
The campaign however was quick, marketed for only three weeks.
It attracted a huge crowd of onlookers and a whopping 24 registered bidders, with six actively bidding.
“The vendors are his family in the UK, which I haven’t spoken to yet, but they’ll be very happy I’m sure.”
Andy Bigham, a relative of the deceased owner, was present at the auction and said the owner had a “fascinating story,” about how he had moved to Australia from the UK around the 1950s.
“He left the family business and answered an advertisement in The Daily Telegraph in London, where they were advertising for a crocodile hunter, so he went crocodile hunting in the Northern Territory for a while … that’s what bought him out here, that was his first job,” he said.
Mr Bigham said the man had then gone onto be an English teacher and also a taxi driver.
“He very much kept to himself … then the family couldn’t contact him and so I tracked him down and found out he’d gone to hospital,” he said,
“He never came back to the home after hospital and this place, you probably didn’t see before … but yeah, he was a hoarder.
“I then became his guardian and had visited him every few weeks since then” he said.
He passed one year ago exactly to the day the house sold, Mr Bigham said.
The winning bidders, Jessy Zang and her husband, were a young family upgrading from Lilyfield.
They had been looking for a home in the Eastern Suburbs to be closer to their daughter’s school.
“We liked that it’s in a quiet street but close to the busy area,” she said.
They were planning to get a DA approval and get the home renovated and add an extension to the back.
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A “derelict” Kings Langley house with a pool that looked like a swamp attracted 18 bidders with four active, selling for $1.522m, almost $100k above the reserve.
Lead agent McGrath Parramatta’s Kim McChelry said the neighbours of Deptford Ave were very happy to see it sold, looking forward to it being restored.
“It’s on a beautiful street with beautiful homes around it,” she said.
Buyers estimated it would cost $300k to renovate, or a minimum of $100,000 for the bare minimum to make it liveable.
“Currently it’s unliveable and its been looking like this for years,” she said.
A young family wanting to renovate and live in the home were the winning bidders.
“It’s a family oriented area so that will be great,” she said.
An East Killara home has sold almost $400k above reserve for $3.715 at auction.
The five-bedroom residence overlooking the national park at 120 Koola Ave had five registered bidders with four active.
Ray White Upper North Shore agent Jessica Cao said the buyers were relocating from The Central Coast for work and schooling.
“They had been searching for a year, travelling back and forth from the coast,” Ms Cao said.
A home in West Pymble has sold for $3.025m, giving the owners a $1m windfall in just one year.
The property, 4 Tristania Pl attracted 10 registered bidders.
Lead agent Thomas Merriman from Ray White Upper North Shore said the home had undergone no extra renovations since the family had bought it off him 5 years earlier for $1.998m.
“We had 107 groups view the house in total with 24 contracts issued in the end,” he said.
The property sold above the auction price guide of $2.7 million to $2.97 million.
“The buyer grew up in West Pymble and is buying to return to the suburb.”
Originally published as Hoarder house owned by croc hunter sells for $2.45m
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