Rare rundown Redfern cottage hits the market for $3 million

A rare block of land with a crumbling home five times the size of other lots in the same inner-city neighbourhood has hit the market with a $3 million dollar price-tag.    

The Redfern home sits on 507 square metres of land – almost unheard of in Sydney’s inner suburbs where homes, including terraces on the same street, are often squashed into blocks of about 100 square metres.

And while investors and homebuyers in Sydney scramble over old homes on prime real estate, this rundown home comes with a caveat.

Dascombe Cottage, with its peeling paint and wires running across the walls, is part of the original estate of William Redfern, the suburb’s namesake, and is heritage listed.

A spokesperson for the City of Sydney council says the property should be retained and conserved, while the Local Environment Plan for the property indicates that extra stories cannot be added to the home, and changes cannot be made to facade unless they are restoring original features.

According to the heritage listing, it’s a rare example of a single style Georgian House in the Redfern area and a typical working class housing.

The mid-Victorian-era home, which dates back to at least the mid-1850s, is one of the few examples of property that age left in the area, according to University of Sydney heritage expert Professor Paul Ashton.

The surrounding neighbourhood would have been subdivided into smaller blocks in the early 19th century, and replaced with terrace houses during the building boom of the 1880s.

“The majority of stock left in Redfern is from the 1880s onwards,” Mr Ashton said.

The first documented owner was gardener John Alexander in 1853, followed by a William Baker who died in the late 1880s. It was then inherited by William Henry Baker, who lived there with his wife and nine children. 

Selling agent William Phillips of BresicWhitney said he had never seen a property like it before: “Never. Not of this age, not on a block of land this big.”

“We have had around 20 groups through so far.” Most of the inquiries so far have come from developers looking to subdivide and locals looking to build, with the potential to put a new home alongside the existing building.

He said the house was habitable in its current state: “It’s liveable – it’s just very tired.” He suggests any plans that buyers had for the property would need to be discussed with council.

Christian Ziade, of Belle Property in Surry Hills, agreed a rare block of this size was “are a very hot commodity.”

“In the last two years, Redfern has not seen a property of this calibre or this size on the market,” he said.

The most recent nearby sale was a relatively untouched 350-square-metre warehouse in George Street, Redfern – it sold for $3,615,000 late last year.  

In neighbouring Waterloo, a potential mixed-used development site on a 455-square-metre block sold for $3 million in November last year.

Given the unknowns around the site’s development potential, two valuers contacted by Domain struggled to put a firm value on it.

 Blocks of this size are more likely to be found further west from the city, starting in suburbs like Haberfield or Petersham.

According to a spokesperson for the City of Sydney Council, “the owner of the property would be required to prepare an Assessment and Heritage Impact Statement, or a Conservation Management Plan, prior to any major works being undertaken”.