‘Bittersweet:’ Central Coast man sells late brothers home for $2.353m
A Central Coast man has bitter sweetly sold his late brother’s home to a first homebuyer couple, with the windfall going towards helping his two sons get into the “hard” and pricey market.
A Surry Hills terrace has sold for $2.353m, $253,000 above its reserve.
The two-bedroom residence at 52 Arthur St, sold under the hammer in front of a crowd of almost 100.
With an experienced family-friend bidding strongly on their behalf, a couple came out on top of a total of nine bidders with six of them actively bidding.
The property had a price guide of $1.9m and a reserve of $2.1m.
The vendor, Mark Hillier was selling the property owned by his brother who had recently passed away.
“It’s mixed emotions … I’m extremely happy and relived,” he said.
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“It just goes to show all these years, my brother knew what he was doing. “It’s been a year since he passed, I’m really proud of him and eternally grateful for what he did,” he said.
Mr Hillier said his brother had left school at 14 and “worked his tail off,” to build wealth through business ventures and property investment.
“The typical rags to riches through sheer hard work,” he said.
“I’m very happy, I met the couple that bought it and they seem like a really lovely young married couple and it’s their first property,” he said.
Mr Hillier had also recently sold another of his brother’s property’s via BresicWhitney on the same street. The property at 81 Arthur St was a two-bedroom modern terrace which sold in late March for $3.35m.
He planned to gift a large portion the proceeds of both sales to his two sons, to help them get into the property market.
“Prices are too hard for young kids regardless of how diligent they are at saving,” he said.
Mr Hiller praised his agent, BresicWhitney’s Michael Kirk and said “he couldn’t speak highly enough of them.”
“He worked his butt off … he was really honest, he didn’t inflate any pricing, he kept my expectations in check.”
Despite the heated nature of the auction, Mr Kirk said that was a “normal representation of auctions at the moment.”
“For something like this in the heart of the Surry Hills village and now that the election is out of the way and Labor won by a fairly strong margin, there’s a lot more stability,” he said.
With the hope of rates coming down, Mr Kirk said inquiry levels and open attendance had picked up.
“Surry Hills is continually evolving and we seem to be attracting buyers that historically were focused solely on Paddington, they are coming across to Surry Hills for the light rail that connects you to the city, the new TOGA development and with all the restaurants and dining, we have seen a noticeable transition.”
The median house price in Surry Hills is currently $2.107m, according to PropTrack data.
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Originally published as ‘Bittersweet:’ Central Coast man sells late brothers home for $2.353m