Canberra’s Carmelite Monastery auction offers unique opportunity
The long-time Carmelite Monastery on the residential Golden Mile in Canberra has been listed for a November 9 auction, billed as an unprecedented buying opportunity.
The long-time Carmelite Monastery on the residential Golden Mile in Canberra has been listed for a November 9 auction, billed as an unprecedented buying opportunity.
It has been listed by Andrew Chamberlain and Mario Sanfrancesco, at Blackshaw Real Estate, who have issued an $8m price guidance.
The 28 Mugga Way property served as a monastery for the Carmelite nuns from 1974 for five decades until the final four sisters, Monica, Bernadette, Francesca and Paula, left for Melbourne in August.
They received a message with an apostolic blessing from Pope Francis at a farewell mass.
The eight-bedroom, six-bathroom home features an antique front door, Tudor walnut panelling, diamond leadlight windows and a vintage chandelier.
The nuns extended the 1936 residence with a Paul Archibald-designed chapel in 1992 on its 5001sq m holding, which backs onto a nature reserve.
The house was built by the so-called prince of the federal parliament press gallery, Joe Alexander, on land sold to him for £100 by former prime minister Billy Hughes who had held the building block lease from 1925 to 1936.
Alexander, who wrote for the Sun-News Pictorial, and wife Katherine engaged builder Alf Stephens to construct the home they named Glenfinnin. The couple owned it into the 1960s.
Its gardens come with lush lawn, roses, rhododendrons, pieris, azaleas, magnolias, camellias, a range of fruit trees, plus vegetable gardens and glasshouses.
“It would be an ideal setting for a magnificent dream residence, or corporate retreat or given its versatility, potentially an organisation’s headquarters,” the marketing suggests.
While Canberra’s highest known single-dwelling sale stands at the $9m paid in 2022 for a five-bedroom, four-bathroom house in Deakin, the tightly held Red Hill heritage precinct is the national capital’s finest residential strip buoyed by strong diplomatic representation throughout the decades.
On numerous occasions, near neighbours have held the ACT house record, including Woodleigh, the five-bedroom home on 7965sq m at 25 Mugga Way, which fetched $8m in 2020 when eclipsing the $7.3m record of 27 Mugga Way in 2010. The house at 29 Mugga Way held the record in the 1980s.
It was 1974 when Catholic Archbishop Thomas Cahill received a request from the Mother Prioress of the Carmelite Monastery headquarters at Kew in Victoria seeking approval for the establishment of a foundation.
Sister Mary Gertrude was named as the first sister superior of the enclosed order, which in the mid-1970s had 138 sisters across the country.
The Carmelites, whose lives are mostly dedicated to prayer and penance, abandoned their original foundation on Mount Carmel in Palestine because the Saracens were reconquering the Holy Land from the Crusaders around 1247.
Seaforth riches
The nation’s top weekend sale was at Sydney’s Seaforth when $15.7m was paid for a five- level house on Middle Harbour.
There had been $15m guidance for the six-bedroom, seven-bathroom home with six-car garage on its 1600sq m block.
The Battle Boulevard property, sold by lower north shore agents Anna Chen and Guido Scatizzi, attracted four registered bidders.
The property last traded for $11.3m in 2020 when bought by the Gau family.
It was conceived by architect Ralph Cunningham, featuring a striking sculptural staircase.
There is an internal lift plus an inclinator to the jetty with its two boat berths.
Slow to clear
Canberra, which has regularly reported the weakest of auction success rates in recent years, secured a 71 per cent preliminary clearance rate which was the nation’s highest weekend tally, according to CoreLogic.
Adelaide, which has regularly been the best recent performer, sat at 67.5 per cent, its second lowest clearance rate this year.
Melbourne held steady at 64 per cent while Sydney rose to 69 per cent. Brisbane returned the weakest tally at a 62 per cent.
Brisbane’s top advised sale was an acreage at Brookfield set 15km from the CBD.
The five-bedroom, four-bathroom house on its 4.04ha holding fetched $4.4m through Josephine Johnston-Rowell at Johnston Dixon.
The hilltop property with mature fruit trees rolls down to Gold Creek.
The national preliminary combined capitals clearance rate bounced a little higher to 66.6 per cent.
CoreLogic’s Tim Lawless noted the 2525 auctions held across the capital cities last week, was the second highest volume through the spring season so far.
CoreLogic is currently tracking around 2600 for auction this week and more than 3000 auctions the week after.
“The coming weeks will test the depth of demand, as the volume of auctions ramps up. Historically, the peak in auction activity has typically occurred in late November or the first two weeks of December, although last year the peak was in the last week of October as activity was disrupted by the November rate hike,” Lawless said.
Out of the norm
Melbourne’s top advised sale was unusually in Brunswick with Yalumba, a grand 1880s Victorian mansion with a 1920s Spanish mission twist, selling on the eve of the auction for $4.15m.
The inner-north residence was marketed as having “a remarkable interior domain exhibiting a degree of detail and standard of quality akin to the luxury mansions placed south of the Yarra”.
The price guide had been $3.85m to $4.2m from Jellis Craig agent Greg Cusack having been sold unrenovated in 2018 at $2.1m.
The second dearest house sale in Melbourne was $3.85m in Hawthorn, which ranks as a traditional engine room for the auction market.
New listings boost
National new listings were at their highest volume for the month of September since 2015, according to the PropTrack director of economic research Cameron Kusher.
New listings on realestate.com.au rose 2.8 per cent in September and 10 per cent annually, with year-on-year increases in new listings in 12 of the past 14 months.
September saw the strongest month for national new listings since February.
The lift in new listings gave buyers more choice as total listings were at their highest level since last November.
Kusher noted the suburb with the biggest increase was Barangaroo where there was a 221 per cent year-on-year jump in total listings.
The Chinese billionaire Gao Yunfeng from Han’s Laser Technology group secured the early September sale of his dual-level Barangaroo penthouse for $15,675,000.
The price guidance had been $18m to $19.8m for the four-bedroom, four-bathroom Andara complex apartment bought with FIRB approval for $12.5m in 2016. It sold to the Melkman family after being listed in May.
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