Auction wrap: $16.66m for Sydney’s Wendouree wonder

A recovering Melbourne property market has outperformed Sydney with its weekend auction clearance rate hitting 81 per cent.

41 Vaucluse Road, Vaucluse, was the nation’s top sale for the weekend.

A recovering Melbourne property market has outperformed Sydney with its weekend auction clearance rate hitting 81 per cent, according to realestate.com.au.

Sydney’s success rate sat at a still strong 78 per cent, and Canberra was the most impressive at 92 percent.

While Melbourne auction volumes are increasing, the 632 listings were only half the same time last year, CoreLogic calculated.

There were 807 Sydney homes taken to auction, down on the 940 Sydney homes auctioned at the same time last year.

Wendouree, a Vaucluse house listed for the first time in eight decades, fetched $16.66m, the nation’s top sale.

But the sale of the home, with harbour views, revealed serious flaws in NSW’s land valuation system.

The official unimproved land value of the 928sq m Vaucluse Road block was only $5.83m, suggesting the unrenovated five-bedroom home was nominally worth around $11m.

The property was marketed as “design your own dream home” by its Sotheby’s selling agent Harriet France.

Long ignored land values, either low like Vaucluse or over the top in other Sydney suburbs, will be top of mind for buyers should the NSW government proceed with plans to replace stamp duty with an optional creeping land tax.

The proposal will possibly not apply to prestige properties, although the NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet has declined to put a figure on the just which properties will be excluded.

The weekend result prompted some observers to suggest a tax based on improved capital values, that is land plus improvements, could avoid troubled algorithmically based land values.

15 Newbay Crescent, Brighton, Victoria.

Warne lowers hopes

Cricket commentator Shane Warne is taking his Brighton home to December 5 auction, with lower price hopes than before the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

The Newbay Crescent French Provincial-style home listed in March with a price guide of $6.8m to $7.4m.

There is now a $5.8m to $6.38m guide for the five-bedroom, five-bathroom home through JP Dixon’s Jonathan Dixon.

It boasts a pool and spa, plus a home cinema, nightclub-quality bar and wine-tasting room with space for 530 bottles.

Warne paid $5.4m in early 2018.

He announced the forthcoming auction on Twitter, “Yes we are selling our family home … Sad but I know this amazing house will make a family very happy and they will create their own amazing memories!”

Subdued price

Melbourne’s top reported weekend sale was $4m in Malvern. Its price, like many others, was subdued, having come with a $3.9m to $4.2m Marshall White pre-auction price guide.

The four-bedroom contemporary home behind its 1890s facade at 46 McKinley Ave last traded in 2003 at $1.17m prior to its 2008 Canny Homes rebuild.

The ANZ-backed home price estimates website was again in the spotlight over their wayward estimates on prestige Melbourne auction prices.

With a sparsely spread street-side crowd of three dozen, and one agent who opted not to wear his mask, a Middle Park home fetched $3.62m at Saturday’s onsite auction, after having been listed with $3.4m vendor hopes.

The ANZ-backed REALas website proffered, with “high confidence”, a $3,161,000 price guide for the two-bedroom 93 Harold Street offering.

Last weekend a Malvern East home fetched $5m when sold to clients of buyers’ agent Mal James, who criticised the ANZ-backed home price estimator for providing a $3.138m pre-auction price prediction.

The ANZ Buy Ready website had advised the market price range for this weekend’s $4m Malvern top seller as $2,875,000 to $3,750,000.

“Banks (even with no humans) could be checking the internet for new builds, agent quotes and so on, before they give out this value advice,” James blogged.

Burns yearns for home

Heading back to his native Adelaide, former AFL player turned coach Scott Burns is selling his Melbourne home.

The former Collingwood captain, who is heading back to South Australia to take an assistant coach position at the Crows, has owned the Surrey Hills home for over two decades, having paid $335,500 in 1998, a couple of years into his Pies tenure.

Burns added an extension to the 1930s Croydon Road cottage on 760sq m, and is now asking between $2.4m and $2.6m through Kay & Burton agents Monique Depierre and Scott Patterson. The double-front weatherboard has four bedrooms and two bathrooms. There’s a rear paved courtyard with a built in barbecue.

Brisbane bouyant

With prices quite patchy, Brisbane saw a better than usual 60 per cent clearance rate, with its 117 listings, well down on the 190 offerings the same time last year.

Brisbane had the nation’s cheapest auction when mortgagees sold a Cambridge Towers apartment in Fortitude Valley for $240,000. The one bedroom 9th floor 338 Water St, Fortitude Valley offering last traded when bought in 2013 by a Beicai, China-based buyer in what CoreLogic advised as a $378,000 rebated sale.

902/338 Water Street, Fortitude Valley, Queensland.

Brisbane’s top sale was $2.74m for a four-bedroom apartment at 105/8 Goodwin St, Kangaroo Point, fetching just above its $2.6m sale price in 2012.

A Hamilton house with views of the city sold under the hammer for $2.71m through Ray White agent Damon Warat to a local family. The three-level 2008-built home on Hillside Crescent had last sold at $2.8m in 2017.

“Our biggest difficulty is finding enough sellers to satisfy the huge number of buyers that we have,” Mr Warat said.

“There is a bit of urgency at the moment to get things done before Christmas; if you are not listing your property in the next week, then you are missing the boat,” he said.

Terrific Terrigal

The Terrigal apartment record price is to be reset with the listing of the award-winning penthouse in the La Joya complex.

The penthouse, spanning 345sq m of internal space and a 305sq m wrap-around terrace, occupies the whole floor level, split into two wings, one for accommodation and one for living. There are four bedrooms and three bathrooms.

5/15 Painters Lane, Terrigal, NSW.

A private terrace with spa opens from the master bedroom, while the terrace wraps around to an outdoor entertaining space with barbecue kitchen, set off the open plan kitchen, living and dining area, which is flanked with floor to ceiling glass.

Wayne and Beth Chivas of Central Element Developments, a veteran developer on the NSW Central Coast, moved in to test the penthouse on completion and never moved out.

McGrath Terrigal agent Mat Steinwede has a guide of $4.5m to $5m.

Steinwede suggest it’s the best apartment he’s seen in his 25 years of selling in the Terrigal area.

The Painters Lane block of five was completed in 2007 by architect Andrew Dickson at White + Dickson Architects, winning the MBA awards in 2008 for the best apartment in NSW and in Australia.

“The market here is firing. We’re seeing an oversupply of people from Sydney now that they can work from home. Our buyer pool has tripled this year and they’re pretty much all from Sydney.

“The La Joya penthouse is half the price of comparable properties in Sydney and affluent buyers are recognising the value. We’ve already got some very strong interest.”

The last sale in the block came just over 12 months ago when a three-bedroom apartment sold for $2,125,000.

The current sales record in Terrigal is $3.7m, according to CoreLogic, set in 2014 with the penthouse atop the Aria complex on Terrigal Esplanade facing the beach.