Casey home breaks suburb price record with $1.79 million sale at auction

A five-bedroom house has set a new price record for Casey, selling at auction for $1.79 million – $90,000 above the previous record set in early 2022.

The home at 14 Bev Lawson Street sold to a local Gungahlin family on August 12 after a three-week sales campaign during which around 100 groups inspected the property.

“The whole campaign was busy,” said sales agent Andrew Potts of Altair Property, and a couple of the nine registered bidders were active at the auction, “so it naturally got to that [price]”.

Bidding for the home started at $1.45 million, with three or four bidders still active past the $1.65 million mark, Potts said.

The architect-designed home, built around 10 years ago, sits on an elevated north-facing corner block with views over Gungahlin. Split over two floors, it features one bedroom and bathroom on the lower level and four bedrooms, a bathroom and an en suite on the second level. 

An open-plan kitchen, dining and family space on the ground floor opens to a deck and covered al fresco area, with views that proved to be a key drawcard, Potts said.

“You sit out the back on the deck or the al fresco [area] and you’re looking back over Gunghalin,” he said. “A lot of people who looked at the property said they liked the views.”

The kitchen, which was fully updated three years ago, includes a walk-in pantry, Smeg appliances and a large island bench.

“The feedback that I had from all the people coming through was that it’s new enough but it’s still established, so it’s almost better than the brand-new homes that haven’t got that nice leafy feel,” Potts said.

“At the top of Casey, you’ve got a lot of reserve and parkland around it and nothing else really getting built, so it’s nice and settled in.”

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The sale came in well above Casey’s median house price of $820,000 – on data from the latest Domain House Price Report – which was a year-on-year drop of 7.2 per cent.

Despite the decline in the suburb’s median price, Potts said he was seeing strong demand for homes at the higher end of the market.

“For a lot of the other properties, it’s a bit more price sensitive, so that means unless you’re priced properly, it may just take that bit longer,” he said.

“The sales are still there but it’s just not a foregone conclusion that it’s going to sell in a couple of weeks, which may have been the case if you go back 12 months.”