By Carmen Forward
An entry level yet unliveable unit in Mosman with a glimpse of the Harbour Bridge has sold for $1.1 million.
The deceased estate at 2/20 Somerset Street started with a price guide of $700,000. But it was revised multiple times due to sheer interest, landing on $950,000 by the end of the campaign.
Twenty-six buyers registered to bid on the property. There were a mix of first home buyers, with and without the backing of the bank of Mum and Dad, parents who were looking to buy for their children as well as investors and builder-renovators.
The auction began with a bid of $888,000 and bidding went up in mostly $10,000 increments. A young woman, from out of the area, placed the winning bid. She outbid an investor who was bidding over the phone from Singapore where they live. The reserve was $910,000.
BresicWhitney Inner East’s Brigitte Blackman said the sheer competition helped the property reach its result.
“There were a lot of opportunistic buyers who came. It was unliveable but it was an opportunity to get into Mosman,” she said. “It had its own aspect in a small block with a Mosman address.”
The unit last sold for $86,000 in 1985, records show.
A large Lidcombe house has sold for $4,010,000 to a multigenerational family, breaking the suburb’s record.
The eight-bedroom house in Sydney’s west, in close proximity to Lidcombe train station and the M4, sold for $810,000 above the suburb’s prior sale record of $3.2 million on the weekend.
The empty-nester vendors were looking to downsize from the property at 25 Gallipoli Street after raising their large family.
Two families registered and bid. Both intended to move in with multiple generations from children to grandparents.
Bidding opened at $3.5 million with $100,000 bids taking it all the way to $4 million. A final $10,000 bid secured the home for the winning family.
Selling agent James Kim of McGrath Strathfield said the reserve of $4 million was hard to set with no comparable homes in the area.
“The way we priced it was the land value plus the replacement cost,” he said.
Kim said the land value for a 613-square-metre block was about $2 million and the cost to replace the home was about $2 to $2.5 million.
The buyer from nearby Yagoona inspected the property six times before the auction and couldn’t find fault with it when asked for feedback from the agent.
“[He said,] ‘It’s a perfectly built home … there’s not even a crack in a wall that I can point out. It’s just perfect.’
“Everyone was just in awe when they came in through the door … The only negative thing was [some said] there was just too many rooms,” Kim said.
The property was one of 744 scheduled auctions in Sydney on the weekend. By Saturday evening, Domain Group recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 71.2 per cent from 476 reported results, while 92 auctions were withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate.
In Sans Souci, a three-bedroom townhouse at 3/19 Meriel Street, sold for $1,465,000 to buyers upsizing from a Brighton-le-Sands apartment. The reserve was $1.25 million.
Five registered and all bid actively. Bidding opened at $1.2 million with $10,000 and $5000 bids fired rapidly in the 10-minute auction held first thing in the morning.
Selling agent Roger Lahoud of McGrath St George said there were nine townhouses within the complex.
“It’s close to the beach and Sans Souci is a pretty cosmopolitan area of attraction of cafes and the beach and, [it’s a] family orientated suburb,” he said, noting the property needed updating.
Lahoud said there was still a bit of caution out there with buying and selling.
The townhouse last traded for $587,900 in 2007, records show.
In Guildford, an incomplete building project located at 12 Trenton Road, that had sat in the elements for five years passed in at $1,210,000 at auction.
Eight registered and four bid actively. Those who didn’t bid were looking for a bargain while those who did bid were owner-occupiers looking to knock it down and start from scratch.
Bidding opened at $850,000 and went up in $50,000 bids to $1.1 million where it slowed. Bids of $5000 and $10,000 edged the price to $1,210,000 before bidding halted.
LJ Hooker’s Steven Khawam said that, while he considered the pass-in result a reasonable price, the vendor was expecting more.
Khawam said the vendor told him the project owed him $1.5 million from knocking down the old house, DA, council contributions and commencing construction.
PRD’s chief economist, Dr Diaswati Mardiasmo, said Sydney’s clearance rate of 71.2 per cent was quite a jump from last week’s 68.3 per cent.
“So that means that we are definitely seeing a much higher confidence level in the Sydney market. And it could be spurred by the fact that there is going to be a meeting [of the] RBA [tomorrow].”
Mardiasmo said, with the end of financial year approaching, it was normal to see more stock on the market.
“It is around May normally when it does happen … because we’re getting towards the end of the financial year. And with potential finances and settlement times and things like that, to make sure that it does fit in within that financial year.”
With Tawar Razaghi