Seaforth home sells for $6.21 million hours before city is plunged into lockdown
A five-bedroom home in Sydney’s northern suburbs sold for $6.21 million just hours before public auctions and unrestrained open-for-inspections were banned under a COVID-related lockdown.
The home at 1A Bligh Crescent, Seaforth, saw three registered bidders compete for the keys. A family wanting a home closer to the water were the buyers after bidding above the $6.16 million reserve.
“The ultimate bidder just kept bidding $10,000 more,” LJ Hooker Seaforth principal agent Glen Wirth said.
The sale, on Saturday morning, came just before NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced Greater Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the Central Coast, Wollongong and Shellharbour would be in lockdown from six o’clcok that night until midnight on Friday, July 9, because of the spread of the serious Delta strain of COVID-19.
The lockdown means public auctions and open-for-inspections allowing any number of people to attend have been banned. Auctions will now to be held online under directions from the NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard.
But, one-on-one inspections of properties are still allowed by appointment. Only one person may attend these inspections.
By the end of a long Saturday for agents, Sydney’s preliminary auction clearance rate sat at 80.9 per cent after 958 auctions were scheduled and 680 results were reported.
There were 87 properties withdrawn from auction, which were counted as not being sold as part of the clearance rate.
Agents are now deciding whether to go ahead with the auctions and campaign launches planned over the next two weeks.
“It’s a very personal thing,” Mr Wirth told Domain. “It’s very restrictive when you can only show a house to one person at a time, but it’s necessary and you’ve got to protect the safety of the community.”
The lockdown followed a previous stay-at-home order for the Woollahra, Waverley, Randwick LGAs as well as the City of Sydney from 4pm on Friday, requiring some buyers to bid online or over the phone on Saturday.
In Hunters Hill, on Sydney’s lower north shore, a five-bedroom home sold for $600,000 above the reserve after a family made the winning bid of $5.3 million.
The auction of 16 Avenue Road attracted six registered bidders, but only two bid actively.
“There were a few who couldn’t bid in person because they were already in lockdown, so they used a digital platform or were bidding on the phone,” BresicWhitney Hunters Hill director Nicholas McEvoy said.
The price was pushed well above expectations of the mid-$4 millions, with the vendors, who had owned the property for 12 years, left stunned by the result.
“The owners were shocked, but, in the end, it came down to two very strong bidders,” Mr McEvoy said.
Mr McEvoy also sold a four-bedroom duplex at 5 Rocher Avenue, Hunters Hill, under the hammer for $2.85 million, to a family who were one of seven registered bidders.
Like the previous auction, interested buyers were bidding both online and over the phone.
“Moving forward into the lockdown, we’ll most likely be using digital platforms, and because we’ve used them before [in previous lockdowns] it makes it a lot easier,” Mr McEvoy said. “We’ll probably be doing a lot of off-market transactions as well as we did before.”
Some, he believed, would delay their auctions until the lockdown was over.
In Sydney’s upper north shore, a five-bedroom home at 23a Bareena Avenue, Wahroonga, sold under the hammer for $4.92 million, some $120,000 above the reserve.
Ray White Upper North Shore selling agent Graeme Schultz said four parties bid for the home, which had a tennis court.
The home was being used as a rental, as the owners had already downsized.
The buyers, a family, would continue to rent out the home, before renovating and moving in, Mr Schultz said.
“It is a house in need of a grand makeover,” Mr Schultz said. “Their main purpose for the purchase was because it had a tennis court.”
Like many agents, Mr Schultz believed there would be a lot of sales before auction over the two weeks of lockdown, as vendors sought to sell homes quickly and for a good price.
AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver said he expected Sydney’s lockdown market to perform similarly to Melbourne’s, which was recovering from a short-sharp lockdown in May and June.
“There’ll be a dip in numbers for clearance rates but it won’t be a collapse,” Dr Oliver said. “Providing the lockdown ends in two weeks, given what happened in Melbourne, we would expect it to bounce back.
“The key to all of this is how long the lockdown lasts.”
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