A freshly completed, two-storey house in Gordon sold at auction on Saturday for $10.88 million, $1.88 million more than its $9 million reserve.
Twenty-eight buyers registered to bid on the luxurious, five-bedroom home located at 15a Lennox Street, which was guided at $7 million.
Five bid on the house, which has high, raked ceilings, marble throughout, a sauna under a cabana by the pool, a Tesla charger and a giant chess set in the backyard.
Bidding opened at $7.5 million and reached $7.9 million in two bids. From there, the price jumped to $9 million before the auction concluded $1.88 million later.
Coco Cui Roskam from Ray White Upper North Shore said the auction drew a strong crowd of 150.
“A brand-new house at the moment is quite hard to sell in the upper north shore, but this one did a very good job because of the quality,” Cui Roskam said.
The luxurious home had a price guide of $7 million and a reserve of $9 million. Credit: Ray White
The buyers are retirees downsizing from a bigger property in Killara. The vendors are the developers and were very happy with the result, Cui Roskam said.
The address last traded for $3.93 million in 2023, records show.
The property was one of 809 scheduled auctions in Sydney at the weekend. By Saturday evening, Domain Group recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 66.3 per cent from 498 reported results, while 123 auctions were withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate.
A newly built four-bedroom duplex in Strathfield sold for $3,120,000. The French provincial-styled home was guided at $2,950,000. LJ Hooker’s David Pisano would not disclose the reserve price.
Four buyers registered, and three bid on the duplex at 4a Sherars Avenue, which was connected by a garage to its neighbour. The property had been knocked down and rebuilt, and the vendors were ready to move out of the area after living in the property for six months.
Bidding opened at $2.8 million and rose to $3.1 million as bidders placed large bids. A final $20,000 bid secured the keys for a single man attending the auction with his mother.
“It’s so wide, so from the street, it’s quite commanding, but it’s not that deep,” Pisano said. The quality of the build, the fixtures and the location being close to Strathfield and Burwood stations, was what made the home stand out, he said.
Pisano said buyers were cautious and harder to get across the line at the moment.
In Prospect, a six-bedroom family home at 52 Hampton Crescent sold for more than its $2.1 million reserve.
Four registered and bid for the home, which was built by the vendors ten years ago and guided at $1.9 million.
Bidding opened at $1.9 million and reached $2,375,000, the final sale price, under competition. A local from the same suburb won the keys.
McGrath’s Monique Layoun said people preferred to pay a premium rather than go through the headache of building.
Layoun says she thought people were drawn to the property for the ease of access to the M4 and the Great Western Highway.
“There’s no water views, there’s nothing over the top. It’s really just convenient. It’s also close to Parramatta,” she said.
AMP’s chief economist, Dr Shane Oliver, said the clearance rate of 66.3 per cent was below average for August when it would typically be about 68 per cent.
“We’re getting a pickup in listings, possibly reflecting an increase in distressed sales of people struggling with mortgages. So this solution is to sell the property, but buyer demand is not quite keeping up in Sydney, so we’re seeing this sort of gradual softening in clearance rates,” he said.
Oliver said this weekend was the first time since June that more than 100 auctions had been withdrawn in Sydney.
“And that’s sometimes a sign of weakness, [we] don’t quite know, but agents [and] vendors [could be] deciding to pull the market from the auction because there might not be enough interest,” he said.