A four-bedroom, double-storey home with manicured hedges in Carlingford sold for $2,756,000 on Sunday, in a hotly contested auction with five families bidding.
The stately residence at 40 Hibiscus Avenue featured a swimming pool, double car garage and multiple living and entertaining areas.
Selling agent Jenny Zhang from Raine & Horne Carlingford did not provide an auction guide but said, “buyers feedback in the market is $2.5 [million] to $2.7 [million].”
Five bidders registered and four were active, bidding in front of a crowd of 100 people, as most of the neighbourhood turned out to see what the market would do.
Bidding opened at $2.3 million and quickly jumped to $2.4 million, $2.5 million and then $2.6 million before the pace started to slow down.
Once the property reached $2.7 million, it was announced as on the market. A few smaller bids increased the price until it sold for $56,000 above its $2.7 million reserve.
The auction took less than half-an-hour and all bidders competing were owner-occupiers, with two of the buyers currently living in apartments and looking to upsize, Zhang said.
She said buyers were drawn to the frontage, garden and layout.
“All of them desired to live in [the home],” she said. “It’s a beautiful layout. Even if it’s not a modern design … it’s nice.”
Zhang said the market is “tough” at the moment.
The buyers are a young family upsizing from an apartment in Lidcombe, she said, with the vendors downsizing in a move to the upper north shore.
The home last traded for $1,285,000 in 2014, records show.
The property was one of 393 scheduled auctions in Sydney last week. By Saturday evening, Domain Group recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 49 per cent from 259 reported results, while 84 auctions were withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate.
There were far fewer auctions scheduled in Sydney on Saturday as many real estate firms postponed sales or closed completely to commemorate Anzac Day.
In Chester Hill, a four-bedroom house at 14 Minmai Street guided at $1.35 million sold for $1,405,000 at auction.
Four bidders registered and were active, with the prospective buyers all owner-occupiers from the surrounding area.
Bidding opened at $1.3 million with a $50,000 bid taking it to the guide, before a flurry of bids in increments ranging from $25,000 to $1000.
The initial reserve of $1.45 million was adjusted by $50,000 to $1.4 million to meet the market, before selling for just $5000 above the newly adjusted reserve.
There is no legal requirement for a vendor’s reserve to be in line with their property’s price guide.
Selling agent Rania Azzi from McGrath Canterbury Bankstown did not feel the public holiday impacted the auction. There were about 40 onlookers at the 40-minute auction, she said.
“It was a little bit hard to extract the bids out of the buyers,” she said. “It was that kind of auction, which we’re seeing a lot, I suppose, at the moment.”
Azzi said there is “definitely less confidence from buyers. They just need a lot of reassurance when they’re bidding.”
She said the buyer was a family from nearby Greenacre, and the vendors have purchased in Bossley Park to be closer to their children.
The property last traded for $365,000 in 2004, records show.
In Schofields, a four-bedroom modern house sold for $15,000 above its reserve, for $1,465,000.
The double-storey family home at 40 Bayswater Avenue was guided at $1.35 million, with a $1.45 million reserve.
Bidding opened at $1.3 million, with three of the four registered parties actively competing.
Bids climbed in $50,000 and $20,000 increments, with a few $10,000 bids before finally dropping to $5000 and $2,500 lots.
Laing & Simmons’ selling agent Raj Mangat said the market was active.
“There’s a lot of buyers still out there trying to buy homes,” he said.
“The properties of vendors [that] have higher expectations … are the ones … sitting on the market for a bit longer than they should.”
He said the buyer is upsizing from Epping, with the vendor moving to the north shore.
AMP’s chief economist Dr Shane Oliver said Domain’s 49 per cent clearance rate for Sydney is “the lowest in a long time.”
“The property market has been cooling down in Sydney because of the impact of higher interest rates, the war in the Middle East, which is leading to a loss of confidence and poor affordability,” he said.
“A bit of a perfect storm of bad news for the property market at present.”
He said the clearance rate could be the result of low auction volumes over the long weekend, but “by the same token, it is consistent with the deteriorating trend we’ve been seeing for some months now.”