House in the Victorian town of Serviceton listed for sale at $16,500

Want a house for $16,500? It’s possible, but you’d have to be very quick.

This deceased estate on 1000 square metres in the Victorian town of Serviceton, around a five minute drive from the South Australian border was advertised for sale last night at that price.

After being on the market for less than 24 hours, agent Denise Borillo from Ray White Bordertown & Districts already has four or five offers to present to the vendor.

“I’m pretty sure it’ll be sold by tomorrow” she says.

She describes the property as being in “fairly poor condition” but adds that it could be fixed up quite nicely. 

And at that price there’d be room in the budget for a decent renovation. For reference, the median Sydney house price of $1,123,991 — which is about 68 times Kent Street’s listed price. 

The cheapest house on the other side of the border – in Bordertown, South Australia – is listed at $93,000.

Serviceton, with a 2011 population of 270, was named after the Victorian premier James Service, whose brief tenure in the top job lasted from the 5th of March to the August 3, 1880. It was initially on the South Australian border itself before a measuring error was discovered – after being considered “disputed territory”, the town became wholly part of Victoria in 1914. 

It’s also home to the Serviceton Train Station, built in 1889 and home to a pre-Federation customs post. It eventually ceased operating in the mid-1980s, and now houses train artefacts and memorabilia.

Serviceton is the subject of a 1983 song by Tom Waits, called Town With No Cheer, apparently inspired by a newspaper article Waits had seen about the decision to run trains through the town without stopping. It was also covered by actress Scarlett Johansson in her 2008 music debut Anywhere I Lay My Head.