O’Connor home breaks suburb record with $2.615m sale

Seven days. That was how long an O’Connor home was on the market before it was snapped up prior to auction and set a new suburb record.

The five-bedroom house at 23 Hovea Street surpassed the previous record by $365,000 when it sold for $2.615 million on Thursday. The property was scheduled to go to auction on February 20.

The residence sits on 929 square metres of land and features a designer kitchen, an outdoor entertaining area equipped with a built-in kitchen and in-ground pool, and guest quarters at the front of the home.

Selling agents James Carter and Nik Brozininc of Carter + Co Agents said the property attracted 120 groups to the very first open inspection.

“We were swamped with interest for this property but we’re not surprised,” Mr Carter said.

“It’s a home that offers resort-style living and can easily integrate around people’s different lifestyles … this is a house you can imagine living in during a lockdown.”

According to Allhomes data, the house had close to 7500 views on the Allhomes website and an overall engagement* of 182,004 in the space of a week.

The house was knocked down and rebuilt in 2018, and is ready for the new homeowners to simply move in and make it their own, Mr Carter added.

The sellers decided to part with their house to move interstate. The new buyers are a local Canberra family.

Mr Carter also set O’Connor’s previous record in 2017 for the house at 15 Mulga Street, which sold for $2.25 million.

“When 23 Hovea Street first listed on the market, I knew that it had a really good chance of breaking the previous record because there’s nothing like it,” Mr Carter said.

“Over the past couple of years, there’s been a big transformation in the Inner North of people buying old stock, knocking it down and building quality, substantial homes so I think we’ll see more of those homes come onto the market and hit that $2 million-plus mark.”

The latest Domain House Price Report for the December quarter 2020 showed O’Connor’s median house price increased by 20.4 per cent year-on-year to $1.15 million. The latest sale surpassed that median by $1.465 million.

When asked whether he thought O’Connor’s record would be broken again sooner rather than later, Mr Carter said: “It took four years to break the previous sale … I think that timeframe will be much shorter now”.

“O’Connor is the new Yarralumla and I wouldn’t be surprised if this price range is the new norm for the suburb,” he said.

“Who knows, we might see the first $3 million sale in the O’Connor suburb and the Inner North shortly.”

The highest sale in the Inner North was the house at 10 Ridley Street, Turner, which sold for $2.7 million in 2012.

* Engagement levels are calculated by the number of clicks on a property’s floor plan, photos, video, 3D tours, property history and utilising the map functions such as clicking on the aerial view of the property and land details.