Melbourne auctions: Developers push Spotswood home $305,000 above reserve, despite 20-month settlement
A “nervous” vendor who was reluctant to auction his Spotswood home online has reaped the benefits of going virtual after the two-bedroom fixer-upper he inherited from his father sold under the virtual hammer for $305,000 above the reserve.
The owner of 30 Hick Street, in Melbourne’s inner west, was originally scheduled to take his house to auction last weekend but held off due to the city’s snap lockdown to contain the latest coronavirus outbreak.
It was one of 1320 auctions scheduled in Melbourne on Saturday, in what was to have been a Super Saturday before the city locked down.
By evening, Domain Group recorded a preliminary clearance rate of 62.5 per cent from 803 reported results, while 281 auctions were withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate.
When the lockdown, which prohibits on-site public auctions and property inspections, was extended by a further seven days on Thursday, listing agent Peter Gindy from Ray White Seddon convinced the vendor to proceed online.
“I knew we had the interest there so my advice was to go ahead with the auction online,” Mr Gindy said.
The vendor was in no hurry to sell and had requested an 18 to 20-month settlement so his son could finish primary school before the family relocated overseas. But he was also keen to take advantage of Melbourne’s fast-rising property market.
“He needed a bit of convincing to move to a Zoom auction, but he went with my advice in the end,” Mr Gindy said.
There were 11 registered bidders when the virtual auction got underway on Saturday morning, but Mr Gindy said the strength of the bidding meant four of them didn’t get the chance to place any bids.
The sale started below the reserve of $1.1 million, but competitive bidding from seven developers quickly pushed the price much higher.
The final bid of $1.402 million was placed by a developer who owns another redevelopment property on the same street.
He plans to knock down the existing home and build two dwellings on the site, once the settlement goes through in early 2023.
In Albert Park, the former childhood home of much-loved Australian actor and vaudevillian Val Jellay, best known for her role in The Flying Doctors and her duo act with her late husband, Maurie Fields, also sold under the virtual hammer on Saturday.
The three-bedroom, unrenovated cottage at 2 Merton Place was brought to auction by the couple’s son, Marty Fields, who did so with a “heavy, heavy heart,” said listing agent and auctioneer David Wood from Belle Property Albert Park.
Mr Wood explained that Val Jellay’s parents had originally lived in the home and she had inherited it from her father. It has been in the family since 1935.
“In the 1950s and ’60s Val and Maurie used to tour around Australia in their caravan doing shows and when they came back to Melbourne they would park the caravan at the back of 2 Merton Place and that’s where they lived,” he said.
Bidding for the home, which sits on 232 square metres of land and is currently tenanted, opened at $2 million, just within the quoted price range of $2 million to $2.2 million, and was declared on the market when two bidders pushed the price to $2.31 million.
A third party joined the bidding shortly after, eventually pushing the final selling price to $2.525 million – $215,000 above the reserve.
Mr Wood said when he learned on Wednesday that Melbourne’s lockdown had been extended he consulted the interested buyers and the vendor before proceeding with an online auction.
“I went to the buyers and they were comfortable participating in an online auction and the vendors were comfortable so we decided to go ahead,” he said.
“There are other properties that were scheduled for auction this weekend that might not have had the interest there yet because the campaign was cut short and, where that was the case, many agents were pushing those back to after the long weekend.”
Meanwhile, in Oakleigh, in the city’s south east, a beautifully renovated, family home on a large 546 square metres of land and surrounded by manicured gardens, was hotly contested when it went under the virtual hammer on Saturday afternoon.
Seven registered bidders joined the online auction for the stunning four-bedroom, two-bathroom home at 38 William Street which listing agent and auctioneer Robert Cincotta from Ray White Oakleigh described as being in “one of the best streets” in the Oakleigh market.
Bidding for the home, which was listed with a price guide of $1.35 million to $1.45 million got underway with an opening bid of $1.25 million but was quickly met with a competing bid of $1.4 million.
Five of the seven registered bidders got involved in the fast-paced auction and it eventually sold to a young family for $1.67 million – $220,000 above the reserve.
Mr Cincotta said the vendors, who had recently purchased another home in bayside Melbourne, were keen to proceed with the auction online, when the lockdown extension for metropolitan Victoria was announced on Wednesday.
“They thought it was a good opportunity to take advantage of the current market,” he said.
“And because we’ve been doing online auctions for five years now as an office… it was a natural progression for us to keep doing them not just during lockdown, but post lockdown as well,” he said.
Mr Cincotta said he had auctioned four properties online on Saturday.
“I’ve sold three of them and the fourth is now under offer and is about to be sold,” he said.
In Port Melbourne, Marshall White Port Phillip auctioneer Justin Holod wasn’t letting Melbourne’s lockdown get in the way of bringing a double-fronted, free-standing Victorian residence to auction.
The home at 343 Princes Street, just a 10-minute walk to the beach and even closer to Bay Street, was listed with a price guide of $1.1 million to $1.2 million.
But the price guide didn’t stop one keen buyer from placing an opening bid well above the guide at $1,263,000.
For a moment, it looked like she had blown all the other interested parties out of the race, before another couple raised their hand.
It was a two horse race for the remainder of the auction, with the two parties pushing the final selling price to $1,385,000, with the woman who placed the bold opening bid securing the home, which public records show last sold in 2012 for $675,000.
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