A property flipper who bought an Erskineville home last year to renovate it sold the five-bedder for $3.73 million at auction on Saturday, making a substantial paper gain even in Sydney’s patchy market.
The sleek and modern renovated home with separate studio at 155 Rochford Street had an extensive overhaul by its owner builder and sold to a couple from the lower north shore.
The property last traded for $2,445,000 in 2023, records show. This time it was guided at $3.25 million. Four parties registered and all were active, and most were couples without children from in and around the area.
The property was one of 980 scheduled auctions in Sydney on Saturday. By Saturday evening, Domain Group recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 62 per cent from 887 reported results across the week, while 181 auctions were withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate.
Bidding opened at $3 million with bids from $50,000 to $10,000 placed. Bidding was varied with a random mix of small and large bids until it sold for $130,000 above its $3.6 million reserve.
BresicWhitney’s Nick Playfair said the separate studio was appealing to buyers either as a workspace or as an option for guests.
Playfair said quality property that is priced fairly in the market’s eyes was still performing well. “There are plenty of buyers out there that are looking to buy,” he said.
The vendor had bought the property to renovate it and was “very happy with the outcome”.
Elsewhere, a four-bedroom single level house in Strathfield sold for $6 million at auction on Saturday to a family who had recently bought another property nearby.
The property at 23 Carrington Avenue had no swimming pool or special features of any kind.
Eight registered and five bid actively on the home on a 733-square-metre block, guided at $4.8 million. The interest came from owner occupiers as well as builders and developers.
Bidding opened at $4.5 million with $100,000 bids until it reached $5.1 million. Then $25,000 and $50,000 bids were placed until it soared $500,000 above its $5.5 million reserve and sold under the hammer for $6 million.
Belle Property’s James Kaye said, while Strathfield does not have the coastal lifestyle location that other high-end suburbs do, its demographic is drawn to the location for convenience.
“That’s the uniqueness of Strathfield, that we’re able to charge this price tag without having [the beach],” he said.
“If you’re out in the eastern suburbs, you’re quite isolated, where to even get to Parramatta for example, it’s nearly a half an hour to 40-minute trip.
Kaye said the address was “dead bang in Strathfield’s golden mile”.
He said the area had a lot of doctors and lawyers interested in raising their families close to elite schooling. “People prefer to be more in the hub of the business world, and also for their children,” he said.
“Strathfield is considered the centre of Sydney, 15 minutes from the city, 15 minutes out west, 15 minutes to Ryde.”
The vendor was over the moon with the sale price. The house last traded for $2.13 million in 2013, records show.
In Sydney’s west, an extremely dilapidated weatherboard home that had been in the same family for 85 years sold for $1.51 million. The Guildford house at 30 Shackel Avenue was in such a state of disrepair that a tree protruded through a hole in the living room.
The property did not have a guide but was receiving feedback from $900,000. Twelve registered to bid and five were active at the 20-minute auction with a crowd of 60.
Bidding opened at $1 million with $50,000 to $1000 bids placed until the price soared above its $1.35 million reserve.
LJ Hooker’s Paulette Ghaleb said several neighbours on the same street were interested in the property.
“It’s not uncommon for Guildford for neighbours to want to buy in the same street because they have children and they think about the future. They can build and their children can be close,” she said.
AMP’s chief economist Dr Shane Oliver said Sydney’s clearance rate of 62 per cent was a fairly soft outcome for spring.
“The key problem remains high interest rates. [They] are higher relative to where they were a few years ago and there’s not much sign of them coming down this year.
“So you’ve got a pick-up in supply of listings at the same time as cautious buyers. That’s resulting in these fairly soft auction clearance rates,” he said.
“FOMO [fear of missing out] is completely absent, whereas, if you go back 18 months ago, there was a sense of FOMO,” he said.