Leichhardt home occupied by the same family for 100 years up for sale

A slice of history has come onto the market in Leichhardt in Sydney’s inner west, in the form of three-bedroom home occupied by the same family for 100 years.

The charming, well-preserved semi was originally a rental, and was eventually purchased in the early 1960s using a war service loan, said vendor Susan Masters.

“My dad was born, actually, in the front room there,” she said, explaining that he would have been 97 this year. 

Ms Masters said her parents had carried out a fair bit of work on the home during their time there, with the front two bedrooms part of the original layout.

Her mother had occupied the property until moving quite recently, Ms Masters said, and had looked after a lot of the upkeep herself, including putting up the wallpaper in the bedrooms.

“Long before I was born they put the extension on. In 1979 they renovated the lounge room, and the kitchen after that,” she added. “The kitchen is amazing – they kept those cupboards at the bottom, they are the originals.”

Ms Masters has very fond memories of her childhood and the house she grew up in.

“It was a very, very happy home,” she said.

And while Leichhardt itself has changed a fair bit – “there were no coffee shops or restaurants or anything of those things” –  quite a few of the surrounding neighbours are still there.

And, she added, the rose bushes out the front of the house had been there for as long as she could remember.

Situated on a 335-square-metre block, 66 Carlisle Street is scheduled to go up for auction on August 3 at 1.30pm with a price guide of $1.4 million.

It was already catching the eye of keen house hunters, agent Aladdin Hassen from The Agency Inner West said.

Mr Hassen said the existing home had a really good layout, and would appeal to buyers keen to extend either out or up, subject to council approval.

“It’s a huge block for the area,” Mr Hassen said and, while the house had only just come onto the market, he had already had a lot of inquiries with more than 30 emails received over the weekend.

“We are seeing that stock levels are quite low,” he said. “But I believe this would have been popular in any market, because of the history, the size, and the location.”

There have been only been two sales this year on the street, with a four-bedroom home a few houses down at No.62 changing hands for $1.8 million in January. Meanwhile a two-bedder at 81 Carlisle Street, on a 177-square-metre block, sold for $1,157,500 in March.

Leichhardt recorded a median house price of $1.28 million in Domain’s Q1 2019 State of the Market Report.

Named after the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, Leichhardt itself started as a number of land grants, which were incorporated into a municipality in 1871. The 1880s through to the 1920s were a time of development, subdivision and population growth, with the 3312 houses in 1900 doubling to 6625 in 1932.

Carlisle Street, formerly known as Carlyle Street, was named by the developer of the Whaleyborough Estate – a W W Billyard  – where the estate was located, after either the city or castle.