Eastern suburbs family pays $14.5m for architectural Queens Park house

A four-bedroom, beautifully built north-facing property in Queens Park sold for $14.5 million at auction on Saturday before a crowd of 80.

Boasting an architecturally designed renovation, 84 Queens Park Road offered plenty of natural light and came with a pool and basement with pool-view window.

Five parties – a mix of downsizers and families – registered to bid on the home that was guided at $11.1 million.

A young family hoping to upsize from the inner city opened the bidding at $13.2 million, $1.2 million above the property’s $12 million reserve, immediately knocking out three parties from competition.

There is no legal requirement for a vendor’s reserve to be in line with their property’s price guide.

Another family batted bids of $100,000 back and forth, the two groups battling it out until the hammer fell within five minutes at $14.5 million to an eastern suburbs family.

Selling agent Alexander Phillips of PPD said: “This is a [suburb] record by $2 million. The previous record was set last year, directly next door at 12 and a half million.”

“It’s probably the best suburb where you get good blocks of land close to the city, other than Centennial Park,” Phillips said.

The vendor is downsizing. Records show the address last traded for $2,312,000 in 2003.

The property was one of 1278 scheduled for auction in Sydney last week. By Saturday evening, Domain Group had recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 64 per cent from 783 reported results, while 198 auctions were withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate.

In Surry Hills, a three-bedroom terrace at 76 Sophia Street, which had been in the same family for 63 years, drew seven registrations, mostly first home buyers.

Guided at $1.7 million, the two-storey classic layout had a back lane entrance, no parking, and the toilet was still outdoors in the courtyard, not the house.

Bidding opened at its reserve of $1.8 million, with three parties active in the ring. Bids began rising in $25,000 increments, then swiftly fell to $10,000 rises until a final $5000 bid secured the tidy home under the hammer for $2,085,000 to a professional couple.

Selling agent Josh Fleming of BresicWhitney East said that for a single professional first home buyer “you’re probably looking around that million-dollar mark”. He added that the first home buyer couple were “double income earners”.

“I had a lot of buyers that came through the property, and a lot of them didn’t proceed because it didn’t have parking,” he said, adding that “public transport around that area is pretty good”.

The vendors of the deceased estate were a trio of brothers who had been raised in the home. At its peak, 13 people lived there.

In Denistone, a three-bedroom modern villa at 4/360 Blaxland Road with a double lock-up garage sold for $195,000 above its $1,485,000 reserve for $1.68 million.

Seven parties registered, with three taking part – before a crowd on the communal driveway – all of them young upsizing families and couples.

Bidding for the single-level home opened at its guide of $1.4 million and went back and forth in constant rises of mostly $10,000 until it sold within four minutes to an upsizing buyer from Lane Cove.

Selling agent Damian Kennedy of McGrath Ryde said: “The gap between, I guess, apartment living and a house, that path is getting pushed further apart, whereas a villa is … that step between an apartment and a house, which is appealing to those younger families”.

The vendor is moving to retirement living.

The villa last traded for $1,308,000 in 2020, records show.

AMP chief economist Dr Shane Oliver said Domain’s clearance rate of 64 per cent for Sydney was “not bad”.

Oliver said the numbers were “trending down” and below average for the month of March.

“I think it’ll continue to soften from here,” he said. “I mean, if anything, the events in the Middle East, Iran and the surge in the oil prices are adding to the risk that the Reserve Bank could raise interest rates more.

“So there’s even been more talk of higher rates in the last week as a result of higher inflation flowing from higher petrol prices.”