A local owner-occupier paid $1,252,000 at auction on Saturday for a Port Melbourne house with an architecturally designed fissure in the facade.
The striking two-bedroom home at 29 Little Cruikshank Street was designed by architect Robert McIntyre and features cedar beams and soaring ceilings in the living area with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out to the courtyard and garden.
It was one of 553 properties scheduled to go to auction in Melbourne last week. By Saturday evening, Domain recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 53 per cent from 385 reported results throughout the week, while 59 auctions were withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate.
It was the first weekend where all vendors were required to make their reserves public at least seven days before auction day.
The Port Melbourne house, in the industrial modernism style, has a concrete and fibreglass facade and attracted interest from serious buyers and curious visitors during its sales campaign.
It was listed with a price guide of $1 million to $1.1 million on a Wednesday and received an offer on Saturday of the same week, Marshall White Port Phillip selling agent Nicholas Hoo said.
The guide was updated to a reserve price of $1.12 million, the same as the offer, and the auction was brought forward. The home was only on the market for 10 days.
Four bidders, all locals, competed in a fast auction, beginning at $1.12 million and rising in a mix of $10,000, $5000, $3000 and $2000 increments.
A local owner occupier won the keys at $1,252,000. The vendors will upsize.
“It was a really unique offering to the market,” Hoo said, highlighting the car parking and the warehouse style. “It certainly did attract a lot of views because of the facade.”
Hoo said the market is improving slowly, but is fragmented.
“In Port Phillip we have got a chronic undersupply of properties. There is not much stock and we have a lot of people that still want to live here,” he said.
In Cheltenham, a young family buying their first home paid $1.3 million for a well-kept house on a 608-square-metre block.
The four-bedroom home at 5 Eila Close came with bay windows, two bathrooms, a fireplace and solar panels. It had a published reserve of $1.35 million and one bidder at auction.
The eventual buyer began the auction with a $1.25 million bid, which was countered by a vendor bid of $1,275,000.
He made one more bid at $1.28 million, but with no further offers, the home passed in.
It sold in post-auction negotiations at a $50,000 discount from the reserve.
The vendors have built two townhouses nearby and will move there, Lewin Real Estate Kingston/Bayside selling agent Brian Lewin said.
“The market is okay,” he said. “The first home buyer market is okay, it is not great, obviously due to government changes.
“Numbers coming through open for inspections are down. A lot of the buyers out there are a little bit hesitant.”
In Greensborough, a first home buyer paid $635,000 for a bright villa unit, paying $15,000 above reserve in a competitive auction.
The two-bedroom home at 1/37 Warwick Road attracted four registered bidders, all first home buyers, of whom two participated.
Bidding began at $580,000 and rose in increments of $10,000 to $610,000.
The stride then shortened to a mix of $5000, $2000 and $1000 bids, passing the reserve price of $620,000. The hammer fell at $635,000.
The vendors once lived in the home but more recently had leased it out, Jellis Craig Greensborough and Hurstbridge selling agent Daniel Cobern said.
He described the market as inconsistent.
“We have got some properties that are getting really good numbers at open homes,” he said, but others were struggling.
SQM Research managing director Louis Christopher said there were fewer homes for sale in Melbourne last week than usual for this time of year, but there are more scheduled for this week, which he attributed to the start of the reserve price disclosure laws and the softer market.
“Most agents would have known and said that to vendors. There would have been a decision to be made four weeks out to say, ‘let’s not do it on the week of the 16th, let’s wait for the following week, for the dust to settle,’” he said.
He said elevated interest rates and the risk of another rate rise in November are also affecting the market, along with the federal government’s property investment tax changes, low consumer confidence and the upcoming state election period.
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