A badly rundown terrace has sold for an eye-watering $2.45million after it took agents 10 trips to the tip to get rid of all the junk left inside.
The two-bedroom home in Woollahra, in Sydney’s east, sold well over the $1.85million reserve when it changed hands for the first time in 50 years on Saturday.
Jack Taylor from Ray White Woollahra was the selling agent for the Rush Street terrace and told Daily Mail it had been a short but aggressive auction.
‘It was all said and done in 10 minutes so not much could go through your mind. The auction went well, did its job and it ran to a strong price. It was a big result,’ he said.
‘At some auctions people jut stare at you but don’t bid a thing but we had an opening bid ($1.7million) that came up pretty quickly and then there was consecutive bidding.’
A couple from Sydney’s inner west outbid six other parties to land a house in desperate need of a major makeover.
Mr Taylor said the owner had passed away a couple of years ago and the beneficiaries lived in the UK.
The sale of the dilapidated property marked the end of a two-year saga complicated by a series of public trustee hurdles.
Mr Taylor said the auction wasn’t a typical one given the current climate but that there had been a few good sales in the area over the last couple of years.
‘This wasn’t (normal). They’re not usually as competitive as that at the moment. It was an outlier in my eyes, but a good case study for the market at the moment,’ he said.
‘We honestly weren’t expecting this. With a reserve of $1.85million, we thought maybe we’d get $2million. But this blew us away.’
The terrace had sat empty for two years before it was sold and it had been years since the owner filed a tax return.
‘It was a hoarder house and we had to empty the whole thing out, which took 10 loads to the tip,’ Mr Taylor said.
The agent said clearance rates over the weekend were 77 per cent – the highest since July last year.
The property was one of 1,042 scheduled to go to auction in Sydney last week.
By Sunday, Domain Group recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 74.5 per cent from 643 reported results, while 112 auctions were withdrawn.