Auctioneer Damien Cooley at the sale of a rundown Chippendale terrace. Picture: Darren Leigh-Roberts
Ceilings were frayed, paint had bubbled off walls and the backyard was strangled with weeds but a rundown shell of a home in inner Sydney still attracted plenty of buyer interest at auction Saturday.
Six bidders registered for the auction and the three-bedroom terrace on Abercrombie St in Chippendale sold, without parking, for $1.15 million.
The price was $35,000 over reserve and $150,000 above the guide price listed by agents Brad Gillespie and Jye Emdur of The Agency.
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Regions drawing first-time buyers
The auction was one of nearly 650 scheduled across the Greater Sydney area this week. The volume of auctions was a quarter more than last week and well above the 394 held over the same week last year.
There was a crowd of about 30 people at the auction.
The Chippendale auction was slow to get started, with auctioneer Damien Cooley having to give the registered buyers plenty of encouragement.
One opportunistic bidder tried to launch proceedings with a $450,000 offer but it was dismissed by the auctioneer as “ridiculous”.
A builder in attendance later offered $950,000 and the auction was under way. The bids rose in initial increments of $25,000 but slowed to $5000 increases once bidding hit $1.075 million.
The backyard was overgrown.
Five of the registered buyers made offers but much of the auction was a showdown between the builder who made the opening bid and a mum bidding on behalf of her daughter.
The two slugged it out with multiple bids until the mum placed a knockout offer $20,000 above the builder’s last bid. He then declared he was maxed out and the mum was handed the keys after the drop of the hammer.
Mr Emdur said the bidders were a mix of first homebuyers, investors and builders. He estimated it would cost $200,000-$500,000 to restore the property.
“It was a good result considering the condition of the property and how much you’d need to spend,” Mr Emdur said.
Family of the seller Roxanne Giles and cousin Brendan Giles.
The property last traded in 1995 for $166,000. The Giles family, relatives of the elderly owner, sold the property on her behalf.
The owner’s niece said she was “pleased” with the result after initially being nervous. “It was a good price for what the home is,” she said.
Housing experts said this week’s bump in scheduled sales, unusual for winter, was the result of on-site auction bans in April and early May. Many vendors pulled their properties off the market during the period or held off selling altogether.
CoreLogic data showed sellers have had mixed results under the hammer since the first lockdowns were imposed in late March. The Sydney-wide auction clearance rate for the three months to June was 51 per cent.
The auction for a house at Brookpine Place, West Pennant Hills attracted a crowd.
In the Hills area, a four-bedroom house on a 905sqm block in West Pennant Hills sold for $1.46 million, $90,000 over reserve. Ten bidders registered for the auction of the Brookpine Pl home and 30 bids were placed.
Auctioneer Stu Benson said presentation played a part in driving up the price. “Buyers could immediately see themselves living here,” he said. “With COVID’s long-term economic impart still uncertain for many, buying a house that immediately feels like a home instils confidence.”
In the south, vendors of larger houses had to drop their reserve prices midway through their Saturday auctions to get their properties sold.
A two-level house on Billara Ave in Gymea Bay sold under the hammer for $1.135 million, which was $50,000 below the seller’s original reserve.
The Billara Ave house in Gymea Bay.
The two registered bidders each placed a single bid for the four-bedroom house on a cul-de-sac, with the underbidder making the opening bid of $1.1 million. The 550sqm property last sold in 1988 for $155,000.
Another two-level house, on Bell Ave in Beverly Hills, sold under the hammer for $1.485 million – also below the original reserve.
The sellers of the five-bedroom, two-bathroom house had set a reserve of $1.55 million before the auction.
Auctioneer Andrew Cooley at the sale of a house on Bell Ave in Beverly Hills.
The Bell Ave house last sold in 2016.
Auctioneer Andrew Cooley received an opening bid of $1.3 million and two of the five registered bidders participated in the auction. “All the (registered) buyers were young families upsizing,” Mr Cooley said.
The Bell Ave house had last sold in 2016 for $1.32 million, sales records showed.
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