Luxury homes drawing buyers
Top-end mansions in Melbourne are selling at a rapid clip as buyers look past the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns.
Top-end mansions in Melbourne are selling at a rapid clip as buyers look past the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns.
While the spike in virus numbers and clampdown on open home inspections and auctions has hit the middle end of the market, buyers are still snapping up premium homes with strong rumours that a mansion at 2-3 Myvore Court, Toorak has just sold for around $17.5m to international Asian buyers through RT Edgar. An adjoining block is still on the market with an asking price of $8.5m.
“You’re seeing people with serious money and who are well educated about the economy buying big properties and big family homes in Melbourne,” Kay & Burton partner Michael Armstrong said.
Buyers were acting now to get into tightly held pockets in what is likely to be a “variable market”.
“(But) I don’t think we’re going to see a landslide of quality homes in Sydney and Melbourne hit the market,’’ he said.
While suburban markets may suffer, Mr Armstrong says banks learnt from the global financial crisis to better manage their exposures and most well-heeled clients would not sell in bad times.
Just this week he sold a warehouse conversion in trendy Prahran, that was offered for between $6.8m and $7.4m. While unable to disclose the final pricing he says the deal was equivalent to a pre-COVID price.
Buyer’s advocate David Morrell is more tempered, saying Melbourne will suffer from the new lockdown restrictions as agents are unable to prepare new properties for market.
But he insists it is highly active in the off-market realm with the lockdowns even prompting activity over the past week.
He advised clients on purchases worth about $6m ahead of auctions that were slated for last weekend.
Mr Morrell says the very top end is a little quiet although there has been some activity in blue-chip Toorak, with a townhouse in Irving Road selling for $10.7m and two blocks of land on Grange Road selling for $10.4m.
In the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, there has been a run of strong sales in Balwyn and Camberwell. Kay & Burton’s Daniel Bradd and Sophie Su sold a classic home with five bedrooms on Balwyn’s exclusive Reid Estate for more than $5m, after drawing seven bidders and a price $700,000 above the reserve.
The home features indoor-outdoor entertaining, expansive gardens, and an in-ground swimming pool.
Another home in Russell Street, Camberwell, sold for more than $7m via Marshall White’s James Tostevin and Duane Wolowiec.
The 1885 mansion known as “Ailu” is well-positioned in the prestigious Tara Estate. The Italianate slate-roofed Victorian residence sports an imposing tower and is set on a wide garden allotment with a water feature, mature trees and private spaces for outdoor relaxation, entertaining and family enjoyment.
The home’s charms include its period attributes, including iron lacework veranda plus high ceilings with roses and ornate cornices.
Nearby, a modern home in Bellaire Court, Toorak, also sold for more than $10m via Marshall White’s Justin Long and Fiona Counsel.
“The market is volatile but there are so many active buyers taking a long-term view at the moment and paying solid prices … if anything the market is undersupplied,” Mr Armstrong said.
Meanwhile in Sydney, the British Foreign Office is set to pocket about $11m from the sale of a Vaucluse mansion. The 25 Gilliver Avenue property, which was built around 1937 on 1518sq m, has sold for the first time in nearly half a century.
Savills Martin Schiller did the deal over the five-bedroom and five-bathroom property.
The property, which sports two street frontages, a cellar, butler’s pantry, and three-car garage, hit the market late last year. The price guide was $10m to $11m.
Additional reporting: Lisa Allen