Upper Mount Gravatt home in the family for 58 years sells for $530,500 at auction

The Brisbane auction market steadied this weekend, with just 68 scheduled auctions and a clearance rate of 33 per cent.

A three-bedroom, one-bathroom house sold under the hammer in Upper Mount Gravatt in Brisbane’s south-east. A crowd of 20 watched for about 20 minutes as three registered bidders battled it out for the two-level home.

Bidding opened at $450,000, jumped to $475,000 and then to $515,000. After some negotiations and a few discussions with the vendor and buyer, the property was ultimately sold for $530,500.

Agent Jaan Kural, of Ray White Holland Park, said the buyer had been eyeing the property since the beginning of the campaign.

“The family like buying investment properties in that area I work in,” he said. “From day dot when she [saw] it, she was like ‘I want it, I want it’, and I guess she was always going to be our buyer.”

The vendors were the children of the home’s original owner, who had lived there for 58 years. Kural said it was an emotional time for them.

“Emotionally they were a bit upset because it was a family home of 50 years, and it’s obviously a bit hard for them to let go,” he said. “They were really emotional in the sense of letting go [of] your home where you’ve grown up.”

Kural said the result showed that Upper Mount Gravatt remained a perfect area for people to break into the market.

“It’s a good buying entry for first-home buyers. In Holland Park or Holland Park West, the other suburbs I work in, the median house price is from $700,000 to $760,000,” he said.

“This is a couple kilometres out, but you’re still pretty close to the CBD. It’s a great location and you’re not paying as much as you are in other suburbs.”

Elsewhere, a stately seven-bedroom, five-bathroom house set on a just over hectare in Ransome sold for $1.65 million.

In central St Lucia, 71 Orchard Terrace was sold under the hammer for $970,000. With five bedrooms and three bathrooms, the contemporary home also features Tasmanian oak flooring and recently installed solar capabilities.

On the other side of the city, a six-bedroom, three-bathroom house on 1.5 hectares was sold in Wights Mountain.

While unable able to reveal the price the property sold at, agent Michael Kiernan, of RE/MAX Solutions, said the sale showed the importance of the auction process in the area.

“It’s been on the market for 12 months with two other agents, I was the third agent through. Average days on market with other agents [in the area] are up around 120-150 days, give or take,” he said.

“A few vendors out there have that expectation that they’re all worth millions of dollars based on statistics. Which is why I’m doing auction campaigns, and that’s the third property we’ve sold out there within the 25 days.”

The headline auction of the weekend was in Marsden for a property dubbed “Brisbane’s worst house”. A whopping 40 registered bidders turned out among a record crowd on Saturday to see 47 Birch Street sell under the hammer for $253,000.