Architect son helps downsizing mum sell St Kilda East semi for $2.07 million

Melbourne auction sales delivered a mix of unpredictable results, and a memorable Mother’s Day weekend for a St Kilda East vendor, who sold under the hammer exactly seven years after her own purchase.

Sales agent Josh Stirling, of McGrath, who sold the three-bedroom rebuilt period dwelling in McHenry Street for $2.07 million, said the buyers “knew it was ‘the one’, a minute after walking in”.

The local buyers were downsizers and beat competition from two other bidding parties. Bidding started at $1.8 million and by the time it reached $2 million, only two were still in contention.

“It is semi-detached. I do not think many others in the area will have cracked that $2 million, especially in this climate,”  he said. “It is a positive result, a sign we have hit the bottom.”

Stirling said he discovered the son of the vendor – an architect – did the design work on the home’s striking rear extension.

He said it “just got even better” when he learnt the vendor, who is downsizing to “the other side of town”, bought the property on the Mother’s Day weekend in 2012.

“Here we are seven years later; the perfect end to this story,” he said.

The city’s highest auction result was for a three-bedroom house in Montague Street, Albert Park, sold by Cayzer for $3.29 million.

At the other end of the auction price spectrum was a studio apartment on Dandenong Road auctioned by Hocking Stuart. It sold for $216,500.

Domain Group figures put the clearance rate at 57 per cent from 473 scheduled auctions.

The mansion market in Brighton posted mixed auction results last week.

Marshall White’s five-bedroom house listing on St Andrews Street sold for $2,912,500, yet another house on that street failed to secure a multimillion-dollar sale under auction conditions and passed in, agent Nick Johnstone confirmed.

Private sale negotiations continued “with a couple of parties”, Johnstone, of Nick Johnstone agency, told Domain.

Meanwhile, he said a closed-doors auction last Friday night of a nearby four-bedroom house in Laburnum Street rendered a sale contract “just under $2.4 million”.

“This method of sale seems to be very much the thing for these kinds of properties right now,” the Bayside agent said.

Signs of buyer uptick were also found at the public auction of a single-storey weatherboard house in Highett.

The Desmond Street property, about three kilometres east of Sandringham beach, had an indicative sale price of $1.2 million to $1.25 million. It sold under the hammer for $1,255,000.

Buxton agent Scott Hamilton was rapt to see three active bidders vie for the three-bedroom house with its “Chelsea Flower Show-inspired gardens”.

Three potential buyers bid, including a buyer’s advocate, and a couple who had another man bidding for them, according to Hamilton.

Bidding started at $1.1 million but, in the end, the couple did the deal.

“It was a nice open-plan home with a good size block and these very, very beautiful gardens,” Hamilton said.

“It was a good result, a good auction, and the couple, the buyers, are really delighted.”