The auction at 79 Isabella St, Geelong West, smashed its reserve price by $130,000.
A Geelong West house that half the bidders planned to knock down has smashed its reserve price by $130,000 at a marathon online auction.
Twelve potential buyers registered to bid for the 417sq m property at 79 Isabella St, held by the same family since the 1880s.
Richardson, Newtown agent Matt Poustie said he declined several other potential buyers moments before Saturday’s online auction as they were not verified to bid.
RELATED: Geelong’s most wanted streets revealed
Black ‘dragon scale’ house stands out from crowd
Past mayor’s home ready for next chapter
Bids opened at $400,000 using the Gavl app, starting in $10,000 increments.
Mr Poustie called the property on the market when the price hit $470,000.
He took 178 bids — some as small as $100 — before selling the house to a Geelong buyer for $602,500. The auction took 45 minutes to finish.
79 Isabella St, Geelong West.
The two-bedroom California bungalow, built in 1926, is not liveable to rent in its current condition, but that didn’t worry the hopeful buyers.
Mr Poustie said half the bidders wanted to knock down the weatherboard house and rebuild, while the others planned to retain the period-style facade to renovate and extend.
“It needs a little bit of extra TLC. It’s not in rentable condition currently,” he said.
79 Isabella St, Geelong West.
“The parcel of land is superb and it will be a really good property to renovate in that period style.”
Mr Poustie increased competition aided the result, with a number Melbourne parties inspecting the property over Facetime once travel bans were enforced under the city’s Stage 4 coronavirus lockdown.
79 Isabella St, Geelong West.
“I think if you look at what’s sold around the $600,000s (in Geelong West), I thought you would say that we’ve got an A-plus result,” he said.
“But this was the perfect canvas to both knock down and rebuild or to renovate so you get competition from both parties.
“Also we know the Geelong West pocket continues to perform really well at auctions. We were really happy we elected to continue with our auction campaign and not change it.”
79 Isabella St, Geelong West.
Geelong West’s median house price is $705,150, according to Hometrack data.
He said the family have held the property since the 1880s.
“They had an older home on there – they owned the whole block originally but the back block had horse stables on it, obviously not there any more.”
The post Geelong West ‘knockdown’ sells $130K over reserve at marathon online auction appeared first on realestate.com.au.