Brutal reason rotting Sydney shack costs $2m
A collapsing home is set to sell for a whopping price as new forecasts show the housing market is heading in a new direction.
A rotting timber house described as an uninhabitable “shack” is expected to sell at auction this weekend for at least $2m in another sign the Sydney real estate market is losing touch with reality.
The house in the inner west suburb of Enfield sits on a 507sq m block and has been vacant for the past 18 months.
It is not known exactly how the property came to be in its current condition, but selling agent Matthew Blackmore of Richards Matthews Real Estate confirmed that it is not fit for habitation.
Some of the most significant damage was at the base of the house, where timbers were reported to be rotting.
“There are holes in the ceiling, the floor is very old timbers and you have to be careful where you walk,” Mr Blackmore said, noting that none of these features had put off buyers.
“It’s a very popular area,” he said. “Some of the people calling about it told me they had seen the house many times and had always thought to themselves they’d buy it if it came on the market.”
Most of the interested parties expected to register for this Saturday’s auction wanted to knock the original house down and replace it with a new build, Mr Blackmore said. Opportunities to build new housing in the pricey inner west suburb remain exceptionally rare.
“A new house would probably be worth $3.8m, $3.9m,” Mr Blackmore said.
“You’d have to spend about $1.2m-$1.5m on a build in this area to be in line with the (surrounding homes) … if you renovated you would probably need to spend half a million, it’s hard to say.”
The sale follows a string of recent Sydney auctions featuring derelict houses that are not in a state fit for living.
Last week, a crumbling two-bedroom home on Barker St in Kingsford sold for $2.6m, $800,000 over reserve.
“I can’t believe it, all the feedback was $1.75 million,” said selling agent Les Salem of Wolf Property Group. Mr Salem told The Daily Telegraph the guide had been set at $1.8m.
Another rundown, deceased estate at 108A The Boulevard, Strathfield, sold for $3,510,000 at auction last week, a price $610,000 over the $2.9m reserve.
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The three-level home, built in the 1970s, was owned by a local doctor, who used the ground floor as his surgery and lived in the residence above.
The Enfield home going to auction this week is located on The Parade, a street that is no stranger to outlandish sales.
In 2020, a house on The Parade that had been used as an alleged drug lab before it went up in flames sold at auction for $1.38m, considered unusually high at the time. The price for the house with no roof was $500,000 over the reserve.
Home prices are expected to continue rising this year.
KPMG’s Residential Property Market Outlook June 2024 released last week forecast house prices will rise across the country by 5.3 per cent over the next six months through to the end of 2024.
They are then expected to rise by 5.6 per cent across the capital cities in 2025.
PropTrack figures indicated about 70 per cent of the properties scheduled to go to auction last week sold. About half of these properties sold in pre-auction deals.
Originally published as Brutal reason rotting Sydney shack costs $2m