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Key points
- A Cheltenham townhouse sold for $933,000 above its $850,000 reserve.
- In Carlton, a six-bedroom terrace sold for $1,722,500.
Property listings
A six-bedroom mansion in Hawthorn East sold under the hammer for $5,018,000 on Saturday, with the buyers, a young couple, set to move in next door to the home’s original owners.
The vendors subdivided their original property, titling the home for sale as 5A Neave Street. They built a new home next door and used the existing property as a rental before selling it on the weekend.
Despite Melbourne’s downpour on Saturday, three bidders competed in front of a crowd of around 70 people for the luxury home on 979 square metres of land.
After a slow auction that lasted for almost an hour, the property sold for $668,000 above its reserve of $4.35 million. It had a $4.1 million to $4.3 million price guide.
Bidding opened at $4.1 million, with Jellis Craig Hawthorn director and auctioneer Richard Winneke saying the underbidder was outbid seven times in a long auction that lasted 52 minutes.
“It was quite slow at the end,” Winneke said. “It just kept going and going.”
The luxury home had been used as a rental before being sold.Credit: Jellis Craig
While larger bids were made early on, offers fell to $1000 and $500 bids near the end of the auction. The buyers beat out two young families who wanted to buy the house to be close to private schools for their children.
Winneke said that the strong result showed homes without heritage overlay in the area were the most sought after.
The Hawthorn East sale was one of 1071 auctions scheduled on Saturday. By evening, Domain Group had recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 59.1 per cent from 822 reported results, while 120 auctions were withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate.
In Carlton, a six-bedroom terrace at 51 Nicholson Street, was bought by an owner-occupier for $1,722,500. That was $72,500 above its $1.65 million reserve and well above its guide of $1.5 million to $1.6 million.
The buyer was one of three owner-occupiers who competed for the keys, with bidding kicking off on a vendor bid of $1.52 million.
Offers from the crowd of $20,000 followed, with bidding falling to increments of $2,5000 towards the end of the auction.
Belle Property Carlton principal and auctioneer Scott McElroy said potential buyers were interested in the size of the terrace.
“It was bigger than most other properties that had been on the market lately,” he said. “It was at the end of Nicholson Street that is close to Carlton Gardens,” McElroy said.
On the other side of the city, in Cheltenham, another owner-occupier beat out a young family to buy a three-bedroom townhouse at 32 Primrose Avenue, for $933,000.
The property sold for $83,000 above its $850,000 reserve.
Ray White Cheltenham auctioneer Kevin Chokshi said the result was one of the best for the Central Park townhouse development where the property was located.
“It was presented nicely, but it definitely surprised me for that particular estate,” Chokshi said. “We thought it might struggle to get to $850,000 [at the top end of the guide].”
Four bidders competed, with offers opening at $780,000. The buyer and underbidder using different strategies throughout the auction.
The underbidder made $20,000 or $15,000 bids immediately after the buyer would raise by a smaller increment like $5000, Chokshi said. But this was the winning formula for the buyer, as the underbidder ran out of steam close to the end of the auction.
Only 20 people were in the crowd because of the poor weather, but despite this, competition was still around.
Buyers were still talking about interest rates and another possible rise in December, as the Reserve Bank is due to make its next decision on Tuesday.
“[It’s] not enough to deter them from buying, but it’s definitely something that people have talked about,” Chokshi said.
AMP chief economist Dr Shane Oliver said that the weekend’s auction results demonstrated that the Melbourne property market is still on a downtrend.
“We’ve certainly seen an uptrend in listings over the last few months and that’s consistent with the spring selling season,” Oliver said.
It was the third weekend in a row that Melbourne had over 1000 scheduled auctions.
“There could be some distress-selling associated with higher interest rates,” he said. “But the main picture seems to be that demand is struggling to keep up with the pickup in listings.”
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