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This St Marys house sold for over $1.8 million.
A dated fibro house in St Marys has sold for $1.81 million – double the vendor’s reserve price – at an auction that has sent shockwaves through the local community.
The house on a 961sqm block near the commercial centre of St Marys attracted 22 registered bidders and the price was $920,000 over reserve.
It was one of the highest prices ever paid in the area for a single block without high density zoning, records showed. It was also four times the price the vendor paid for the property back in 2012 and well above the $670,000 median house price in the suburb.
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Seller Pieter Boele, soon to turn 80-years-old, said the sale in the Western Sydney suburb would set him up for life.
“What happened was just exceptional, it’s amazing,” Mr Boele said, adding that he had thought the property might sell for about $1 million.
The home is on a big block but most of the bidders were not developers.
Mr Boele did not attend the auction and said he initially didn’t believe the price when talking to the agent. It was only when the agent sent him a picture of the contract that the result sank in.
Mr Boele had used the home on Gidley St as an investment property but said he was forced to sell because Covid-19 had destroyed his flower business of 30 years.
“(The auction) has changed everything,” he said. “With this price, I don’t have to worry for the rest of my life.”
Selling agent Peter Diamantidis of Ray White-St Marys said he was perplexed by the final price considering there was limited appeal for developers due to the medium density zoning.
“I have no idea why it went so high,” he said. “I have been selling in the area for 20 years, there’s never been anything like this.”
Ray White-St Marys had ordered an independent valuation of the property and used it to determine the reserve.
Initial expectations were that the property would appeal to a childcare centre provider or investors looking for a boarding house, Mr Diamantidis said.
Instead, the property sold to an investor who is understood to be planning to continue renting the property out while “land banking” it for the future. It currently gets $280 per week in rent.
Mr Diamantidis said the purchase may be a gamble considering future zoning changes were not assured.
Auctioneer Tim Snell received an opening bid of $900,000 and the bids went up in early increments of $100,000.
The buyer was reported to be a land banker.
“No one many any offers prior to the auction so it was a surprise to get that kind of bidding. From about $1.1 million I started to realise it was going to be a real cracker,” Mr Diamantidis said.
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The median price of houses in St Marys is $670,000, according to realestate.com.au data.
The agent took the unusual step of publishing the $890,000 reserve prior to auction. “We thought it was best to be upfront and transparent,” he said.