Two 'prime' blocks of inner-city Brisbane land passed in at auction

A breakdown in negotiations caused the auction of the “closest block of land” to the Brisbane CBD to pass in on Saturday.

Developer Derek Gillespie owned 43 Mein Street, Spring Hill, for 17 years, and had planned to build himself a “home base” office building and penthouse apartment on top, but never went through with those plans.

Auctioneer Haesley Cush said the vacant land held sentimental value for Mr Gillespie, making the decision to sell difficult. “Such a rare property, it would be such a precious baby for him,” Mr Cush said.

Bidding started low at $400,000, but two competitive bidders slowly but determinedly raised the price. As it neared $1 million, Mr Cush pleaded with the registered bidders to keep pushing on. “Would you please make it $1 million?” he quipped. “In any other capital city it’d be a low bid to start at $1 million.”

Bidding paused at $1.02 million, but the bidders refused to meet Mr Gillespie’s expectations, and the property was passed in. Mr Cush said Mr Gillespie was not willing to negotiate further.

“I can tell you he was flexible to do a sale today, under the hammer but now he thinks he’ll hold onto it for a bit longer,” Mr Cush said.  

“Not the end of the story, maybe there will be another auction sometime in the future.”

Later in the morning, another block of prime inner-city land in West End was passed in at auction.

The block of 385-square metres in Ashington Street featured at pre-war four-bedroom home, which the owners were selling due to a change in personal finances.

A modest crowd gathered for the auction, as well as three registered bidders, but auctioneer Paul Campion still had trouble moving the property. He put the issues down to a mismatch in expectation between the buyers and sellers. “The vendor obviously knew what he wanted and he was very clear on that,” Mr Campion said. “We couldn’t do anything other than what he told us to do.”

Bidding slowed around $800,000, and Mr Campion placed a vendor bid of $1.04 million, which caused some of the crowd to laugh, and one vendor to leave.

“We placed a vendor’s bid today and he put the bidding paddle in the letter box and left, and that shows where we’re at today,” he said.

Mr Campion said he hoped the house would sell by Saturday afternoon: “We were working hard with the vendor to get the price that he needed. It was just unlucky we couldn’t reach an agreement with the vendors and the buyers.”