A single buyer in her mid-20s snapped up a three-bedroom home in Lane Cove for $2.15 million after seeing it for the first time at auction on Saturday.
The family home at 20 Alder Avenue had an initial guide of $2 million that was later reduced to $1.8 million towards the end of the campaign.
Nine parties registered and six actively bid on the house in a cul-de-sac.
Bidding opened at $1.8 million with increments of $25,000, $10,000, $5000 and $1000 taking the price above its $2 million reserve. The hammer nearly fell at $2.12 million before a $500 bid was allowed through.
Then several $500 bids were shot back and forth between an investor and the eventual buyer until a final $18,000 bid won the keys for $2.15 million.
Selling agent Tim Holgate from Belle Property Lane Cove was pleased that he allowed the $500 bid as it netted a higher price for the vendors.
“She had to have it, did you see the final bid?” he said.
“We were going up in $500s and $1000s at that stage.”
Holgate said the property was in dire need of renovation. “It’s really, really cheap property for our area, but it was basically a knockdown rebuild, the kitchen was pretty much … non-existent.”
The buyer, from the ACT, walked through the property for the first time that day and bid at auction on her own. The vendors were a pair of sisters.
The property was one of 1183 scheduled to go to auction in Sydney this week. By evening, Domain Group had recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 69.2 per cent from 744 reported results throughout the week, while 158 auctions were withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate.
A tri-level, three-bedroom Erskineville terrace at 5/187 Rochford Street sold for $1,705,000 to a young professional couple represented by a buyer’s agent.
Five parties registered and three made offers on the strata apartment with an initial guide of $1.3 million that was later adjusted to $1.35 million.
Bidding opened with a strong bid of $1.5 million from the buyer’s agent, taking it $100,000 above its $1.4 million reserve. Additional bids of $10,000, $20,000, $1000 and $5000 were dealt out until auctioneer Tom Panos banged the hammer at $1,705,000.
Raine & Horne’s Michael Harris said the result surprised most people who attended the morning auction.
“Things are not normally like that in this marketplace. Interest, obviously, bucked the trend.” Harris said people considered the home, which had been untouched since the 1990s, as a renovation opportunity, and also noted that “you can buy a three-bedroom house at that price”.
“We’ve had good success so far in 2025 compared to last year. End of last year, you couldn’t almost give the property away, whereas it has got a different feel.”
The unit last traded for $198,000 in 1994 and had been rented out for the past 30 years, records show.
In Alexandria, a one-bedroom unit with no parking in the award-winning architecturally designed “Arkadia” sold for $870,000.
The residence at 506/18 Huntley Street had a community rooftop vegetable garden and a chicken coop.
Nine parties pre-registered, but only two were active as bidding opened above expectations at $750,000.
The one-bedder had an initial guide of $725,000, which was later adjusted to $750,000 based on an offer.
Bids in increments of $25,000 and $10,000 took the price above its $805,000 reserve before a final two $5000 bids secured the keys for a single first-home buyer from the northern beaches.
BresicWhitney’s Rhonda Yim said the environmentally friendly building was made from recycled bricks.
“There’s actually people, who are the residents, who are basically on these committees, and they look after chickens and keep the eggs and grow the vegetables and plant the produce.”
“It’s won so many architectural awards as well,” she said.
The building has an area for bike storage in the basement.
The buyer does not drive and was supported by her parents at the auction. The vendors were investors who purchased it off the plan.
The address last traded for $700,000 in 2016, records show.
PRD chief economist Dr Diaswati Mardiasmo said Sydney’s clearance rate of 69.2 per cent is “a slight improvement” but not a “frenzy”.
Mardiasmo said the RBA tends to keep everything stable before a federal election.
“We know that the prime minister is going to be announcing when the election [will] be, and history tells us that when there is the federal election, the RBA tends to keep everything stable,” she said.
“Most businesses, even the real estate market, see a little bit of a slowing down for about six to eight weeks while the whole thing is happening because people are just a little bit unsure about what’s going to happen.”