Melbourne auctions: 'Raw', retro suburban home with long-forgotten pool fetches $1,318,500
A 1960s-built brick home in Bulleen boasting many of its original features – including vintage tiling, frosted orange glass and bright chandeliers – sold under the hammer for $1,318,500 on Saturday.
The hotly-contested auction at 44 Rocklea Road, in a tightly held pocket, was one of 1211 auctions scheduled across Melbourne on Saturday.
By evening, Domain Group recorded a preliminary clearance rate of 76.5 per cent from 938 reported results.
The four-bedroom, two-storey home, owned by just one family since it was built, backs on to a large sports ground and features a retro in-ground pool, which sits empty in the overgrown backyard.
“It is fair to say it needs a little bit of work to get it up to your standard of taste,” auctioneer Peter Kakos from The Agency said.
But he added there was great potential in “putting money into a home like this in a marketplace like this”.
“You can put your own stamp on it … and the pool is ready for you to put some water in it or renovate that as well,” he said.
Five bidders, including several developers as well as owner-occupiers prepared to “sink some money into a renovation”, raised their hand during the auction, which started with a vendor bid of $1.05 million.
After some fast-paced bidding, the auction stalled at $1.27 million and Mr Kakos went inside to make a phone call and seek instructions from the vendors’ daughter, in Germany. The owners had recently moved into a nursing home.
Upon his return, Mr Kakos said he was “a whisker away from declaring the property on the market” and bidding quickly re-started, including bids from two new bidders.
It eventually sold for $1,318,500 to a developer who outbid a young couple who looked clearly disappointed about missing out on the opportunity to create their dream home.
“This home was really raw, so it certainly appealed to the developers who look at it as raw land, and then there were those that were hankering to do a full renovation and they would’ve been doing the sums on what it would cost to renovate, so it was really neck and neck there in the end,” Mr Kakos said.
In Glen Iris, in Melbourne’s leafy inner east, a professional bidder, acting on behalf of a local family, used an unusual tactic.
He placed an opening bid of $2,888,888.88 for the four-bedroom period home at 1572 High Street, listed with a price guide of $2.4 million to $2.6 million,
Agent Grant Samuel from Kay & Burton South Yarra said it was one of the most surprising opening bids he had witnessed.
“In terms of the strength of the bid and the quirkiness of the bid, it was one out of the box. That’s for sure,” he said.
“But it was good bidding because he certainly knocked some of the other strong buyers out of the running and didn’t let them get emotionally engaged in the auction.”
While Mr Samuel was expecting four bidders to battle it out for the renovated brick home, set on 947 square metres with landscaped gardens and a swimming pool, only two got the opportunity to put up their hands.
It was also one of Saturday’s most entertaining auctions, with the eager bidding agent cutting off the auctioneer before he’d even finished his introduction to the property.
His subsequent bids were also obscure numbers – so obscure that he even confused himself on a couple of occasions.
With one other bidder going head-to-head with the professional, they pushed the price to $3,001,000 – more than $400,000 above the reserve – with the professional bidder securing the home for the local couple and their two children.
The vendor was a family who had recently returned from overseas and was moving to be closer to the children’s new schools.
In Kensington in Melbourne’s inner west, a landmark home featuring a converted stable and an eye-catching, architect-designed extension, sold for $1.535 million – $135,000 above the reserve.
Three bidders vied for the keys to the stunning two-storey, four-bedroom home at 6 Gordon Crescent with views over Kensington Hill into the city.
Listing agent Charles Bongiovanni from AlexKarbon Real Estate said the stables were converted in the mid-2000s and the current owners added the attention-grabbing extension in 2012, two years after buying the home.
Public records show it was last sold in 2010 for $710,000.
“It was a really clever extension because it added another two large rooms. And the current owners have been able to live here really comfortably with their three children and a dog,” Mr Bongiovanni said.
He said the vendors planned to upsize in the area now that their children were older.
Meanwhile, the new owners of one of Kensington’s most notable homes are another local couple with young children.
In Toorak, a mix of investors, first-home buyers and seachangers looking to secure a city bolthole battled it out for a charming one-bedroom, 1930s ground-floor garden apartment, just a short walk to Toorak Village.
The apartment at 3/7 Wallace Avenue, which had a price guide of $650,000 to $715,000 was bought by a recent seachanger, who outbid four others with a final bid of $730,000.
Listing agent Jack Edgar from RT Edgar Toorak said he was seeing more and more lifestyle changers looking to snap up apartments or smaller homes in the area to use as a city residence.
“With so many more people moving down the coast and working remotely, we are seeing more demand for apartments and single-fronted houses that people can use when they are in the city for work or leisure,” Mr Edgar said.
He said that meant first-home buyers were often going up against buyers looking to secure their second residence.
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