Taylor home breaks suburb record with $1.5 million sale at auction

A five-bedroom home in Taylor has sold at auction for the eye-watering price of $1.5 million, setting a new residential benchmark for the suburb and surpassing the previous record by $108,000.

There were five registered bidders for the sale of 30 Grenfell Avenue, said selling agent Mark Larmer of Independent Our Team.

“We had a lot of interest throughout the sales campaign but because we priced it quite high, only a limited number of people had that kind of money to spend,” he said. “We put a price guide of $1.4 million-plus which knocked a lot of people out.”

Mr Larmer said he didn’t notice the sale had set a new benchmark until days later.

“It definitely wasn’t the intention,” he said. “The focus was on the sale and, normally, a record-breaking house in this suburb has been on a bigger block of land.

“This home wasn’t on a large parcel of land but what it did offer was a secondary living option, just above the garage. It could be used as a separate dwelling or a teenager’s retreat.”

Government records show Taylor’s previous record was set by the house at 39 McCredie Street when it sold for $1,393,000 in December.

The sellers, who were the first owners of the home, parted with the property to undertake another building project in Canberra’s Inner North.

Mr Larmer said if the house hadn’t sold at auction, it would’ve changed hands days later.

“People think that, if clearance rates go from 90 per cent to 70 per cent, the other 30 per cent of homes that aren’t selling at auction aren’t selling at all … but they are selling a few days after,” he said.

“Sometimes selling post-auction is more beneficial and, in some cases, the prices are much higher via private negotiations than at auction.”

This time last year, record sales prices in suburbs across Canberra were being set weekly. But Mr Larmer said the level of frequency had changed this year.

“We had a huge amount of growth in a short period of time … you just can’t put a record price on top of a record price anymore,” he said.

“Buyers have come to the point where they don’t want to spend $1 million on a three-bedroom house anymore; they don’t need to spend that money … we’ve reached a topping point but that doesn’t mean growth has stopped.

“With softening clearance rates, it can look like a decrease in house values but it doesn’t mean the market has slowed. It’s still moving.”