A first home buyer from Maroubra has landed the keys to a semi-detached house in Rockdale for $1,472,000 – less than the sellers’ asking price.
And yet, the home more than quadrupled in price in 24 years since it last sold for $357,500 in 2000, records show.
It was one of 805 homes scheduled to go under the hammer in Sydney on Saturday. By evening, Domain Group recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 67.4 per cent from 534 reported results, while 113 auctions were withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate.
The three-bedroom house at 121 Farr Street had no guide and drew seven registered bidders – a mix of first-time buyers and upsizers.
While the auction was slow to start, it kicked off once it opened at $1.1 million. Five buyers placed offers in varying increments. It whittled down to $1000 bids from $1.46 million between the young first home buyer from Maroubra and a family upsizing from an apartment.
The first timer placed the winning bid of $1,472,000 after the sellers, who are making a tree change to Bargo, agreed to meet the market and reduce their $1.5 million reserve.
Ray White Rockdale’s Kieran Gianoudis said it was competitive bidding and, ultimately, market price for the home on Saturday.
The Rockdale auction garnered a healthy crowd.Credit: Steven Siewert
“Market competition brought out the best price,” Gianoudis said. “[The sellers] were happy to get going. They had already committed to another property.”
He said the area was expected to grow as there were not enough homes on the market, leaving potential sellers in a bind.
“They say ‘Well we’d love to sell, but there’s nothing to upsize or downsize to so it puts us in a box’.”
In Pyrmont, one of the more affordable units in the city traded from one first home buyer to another.
The one-bedroom, one-bathroom home at 121/313 Harris Street, Pyrmont, sold for $642,500 in a single-bidder auction.
With a price guide of $595,000 to $645,000, the property drew the attention of first home buyers during the campaign, but only one, a recent law graduate from Western Sydney, registered on Saturday.
A vendor bid of $630,000 started the auction. The first home buyer bid $635,000, then bid against himself to $640,000, but was still short of the seller’s reserve of $645,000.
The buyer and seller, who also bought the place some years ago as their first home, agreed to meet halfway on the auction floor. The buyer increased their bid again by $2500, while the seller dropped their reserve by $2500.
LJ Hooker Pyrmont and Ultimo’s John Zheng said the seller, who was upgrading with his family, was happy to drop his reserve to help the buyer out.
“[The seller] was also a first home buyer, so he understood where the buyer was coming from too,” Zheng said.
“He understands how hard it is to buy a property without parent help, so he was quite understanding and was happy to negotiate the reserve,” he said.
“So it’s a win-win situation. The vendor can move on, and the successful buyer can move into their first home.”
The home last sold for $435,000 in 2013, records show.
Pyrmont’s median unit price dropped 2.7 per cent to $1.1 million in the year to March on Domain data.
Elsewhere, a tightly held house 38 Mount Street, Coogee, minutes from the beach, sold for $4.19 million.
All four registered bidders, young families and couples from the eastern suburbs, vied for the keys to the house, which had a price guide of $3.6 million.
The auction was quick to start at $3.7 million and went up in mostly $50,000 increments. The reserve was $4.01 million.
McGrath Double Bay’s James Ledgerwood said the owners, who had lived there for decades, were pleased with the result.
“The price was above market expectations definitely with some of the recent sales,” Ledgerwood said. “The owners had owned it for over 40 years, raised her family there and were quite pleased to have sold to another family.”
He said while there were enough buyers, there were not enough homes.
“It’s pretty active at the moment, and buyers are finding it frustrating that there’s not enough. There’s never enough in the eastern suburbs. People have been saying that stock levels are low for 10 years. That’s the normal level [here].”
Coogee’s median house price rose 6.5 per cent to $3.71 million in the year to March.