Jolly pre-auction $4.1m offer sees Brisbane house sales total more than double

A $4.1 million cliffside mansion sale in Jollys Lookout on Saturday catapulted Brisbane’s total auction sales up more than 100 per cent this week.

Domain Group figures put total sales for this week at $15,320,500, with an auction clearance rate of 45 per cent.

A week ago, the equivalent sales figures reached $7,017,500 and a 33 per cent clearance rate.

Saturday’s standout, a four-bedroom Dion Seminara-designed house on 21 hectares, sold before auction after four days of negotiations between vendor Michael Kemp, of Kemp Law, and “a very private local buyer”, reported Joseph Lordi, of Sotheby’s International.

The purchase went unconditional on Saturday, and prompted its listed auction’s cancellation.

There had been “a fair bit of interest” in the palatial 891-square-metre residence with its infinity pool and 140-year-old teak floors since its four-week auction campaign began in September, Lordi said.

Presented with an offer starting with a four, the vendor decided to take “the safer option”, he said.

Mr Kemp bought the property, 25 kilometres west of the CBD, in 2011. He paid $3.3 million, and now planned to go shopping for a riverfront home on the Gold Coast, his agent revealed.

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“It wasn’t just about the figure, which was actually agreed pretty quickly, but there were a number of clauses on the contract around the buyer and seller being able to go ahead with it,” Lordi said. “That took three or four days, but with a property of this calibre you do not expect it to be a simple contract. There are always complexities.”

The buyers are understood to be a local family with children, who must sell several overseas properties to settle on the Jollys Lookout sale.

The multimillion-dollar deal settles in early 2019, “once he (the buyer) gets his ducks lined up”, the agent said.

“It is great for the area as it breaks the (sale price) ice well into the $3 million-plus price bracket. Now, I have just got to find a few more like this.”

North of Brisbane CBD, at Scarborough on the Redcliffe Peninsula, another vendor took a hefty pre-auction offer that was too good to refuse.

Jodie Shipway, of Ray White Woody Point, confirmed the four-bedroom contemporary house got only 10 days into its four-week campaign before a $960,000 unconditional offer landed.

“It took three or four days for the vendor to decide it was the ideal option,” Shipway said.

“We were receiving good interest as homes like this and in such a prime position at the end of the peninsula are hot.

“If I could knock one of these over every few weeks it would be really good, because there is very strong interest from buyers from $500,000 to $600,000.

“To get one at that level ($900K-plus) and get it away that quickly is extremely positive and shows just how much interest is out there,” she said.

Judi O’Dea, of Space Property, has a similar story. She watched a double-storey, inner-north-west home in Bardon sell under the hammer for $1,411,000 on Saturday.

Two bidders fought for the impeccable, four-bedroom family home on 405 square metres from a genuine opening bid of $1.15 million.

Five parties had registered before the auction, but only the eventual buyer and the under-bidder got a look in.

“We didn’t have to put in any vendor bids,” O’Dea said.

“It shot up to $1.39 million on the strength of the bidding, then $1,395,000, we took the highest bid off the floor and engaged in 45 minutes of negotiations between the vendor and buyer, after which we returned to floor at $1.4 million.

“No further bids were made, so we returned for a second time to negotiations.”

The agent said the vendors had spent seven years working with their builder to create their high-end home “and still had a lot of heart in it”.

The buyer was a family group with young children, which had recently sold a smaller house in Kelvin Grove.

“Once he (the buyer) was willing to give a little bit more to it ($11,000), once he loosened up, the vendors loosened up a bit and that was when we reached our ultimate conclusion,” she said.