'Crazy, stupid money' rushes in to Bellevue Hill as panic buying sees values soar 40 per cent

A run of high-end house auctions in Sydney’s Bellevue Hill this week saw guides smashed by millions of dollars as “crazy, stupid money” forces values up more than 40 per cent for the year.

Chief among the local home owners cashing in on the unprecedented surge in value is the Epstein family, whose modernist house with five bedrooms on 770 square metres sold under the hammer for $12.2 million – double the $6.1 million paid for it just two years ago.

Sotheby’s Michael Pallier urged buyers to expect to dig deep for the property at the opening of the online auction before an opening bid of $9 million was made. Thirty bids later it sold after offers from a handful of buyers, with most bids jumping by increments of $100,000.

On Tuesday commercial property magnate Robert Christie sold his 1930s-era residence Taynish, designed by architect F. Glynn Gilling, at auction for $20.9 million – well above the $15 million guide.

The historic 1930s residence last traded in 2015 for $8.15 million and had been renovated throughout in the intervening years.

It was a similar story with a five-bedroom house on Bunyula Road long owned by the Coorey family when it went to auction on Tuesday with a guide of  $7 million. BradfieldCleary’s Mark Daley had 10 registered bidders who pushed the price up to $9.2 million to a buyer with plans to knock it down and rebuild on the 700-square-metre site.

The original guide was based on the sale of the next-door house for $5.05 million a year ago and another house around the corner for a little more than $7 million.

“This is crazy, stupid money forcing prices up,” said buyer’s agent Deborah West, of SydneySlice. “What is fuelling the market is, each of these auctions have sometimes as many as 20 registered buyers and that shows the chronic imbalance between supply and demand.

“And that lack of stock as we come out of lockdown comes as the time-frame until the market closes for the year shrinks quickly, which is prompting panic buying in some cases as people rush to get in before Christmas.”

Carli Skurnik, whose firm One Buyer’s Agency successfully secured Taynish and the Coorey family home for their clients, said she feels for buyers at the moment because in many of these sales they think they are competing for a $7 million house that they hope to buy for $8 million but are watching it go under the hammer for $9 million.

“And this is predominantly cash sales,” she said.

While Domain data shows house prices across Sydney rose more than 24 per cent in the 12 months to July, Ms West says family homes in Bellevue Hill are in a class of their own with a growth of 40 per cent in the past year.

Further, she says, “it’s predominantly buyers who have already missed out on a few properties and they’re now upping their own budgets”.

Mr Pallier adds that the old adage that your home’s value doubles every 10 years should be amended for Bellevue Hill owners to say it doubles every two years.