2 Crown Street St Peters Auction
Why this auction started $400,000 over the guide; and what happened next!
The property
2 Crown Street St Peters is a unique and versatile home. 4 levels and a rooftop terrace over looking Sydney Park, it was described as an “industrial treehouse”.
The home has 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a double garage. It has been architecturally designed with little expense spared.
Total land size of 132sqm and internal floor size 219sqm.
The location is great. Directly opposite Sydney Park, a 5min walk to the train station and King St Newtown
The property came to market with a standard 4 week campaign to be followed by an auction.
Initial price guide was $1,900,000 and was quickly revised up to $2,100,000.
In the days immediately prior to the auction the property garnered some additional media attention, noting the auction was expecting 10 registered parties. You can read the article here.
St Peters record
The suburb record for a 4 bedroom home is with 59 Mary St. It sold in November 2021 (remember when the market was crazy hectic?!). It sits on a 727sqm block of land, and while the house itself was nothing special, that size land is pretty unique. It was also sold as ripe for development. It sold for $2,900,000.
For context, 59 Mary street sits on more than 5x the land size than 2 Crown St. Crown St is a more desirable location & the property far superior. It is difficult to compare a massive development site to a small architecturally designed home.
The Auction | 18 registered bidders | 3 active bidders
The start
Regardless of the guide at $2,100,000, it was obvious to me as a Buyer’s Agent who specialises in this area the property was definitely not selling under $2,500,000. Not with 18 registered bidders. I was actually one of those registered and bidding on behalf of a client.
My strategy was to ensure the auction had as little momentum as possible, and as few active bidders as possible. This was to give my clients the best possible chance of owning it - given I knew the maximum we would bid to before the auction. You should never decide during an auction what you are prepared to pay!
I opened the bidding at $2,500,000. This came to the audible shock of the crowd, many who had probably based the value on the guide and thought they’d be going home owning it for under this. Sorry if that was you, but I wasn’t there to let people throw emotional money around.
Person 2 came in at $2,550,000.
Between person 2 and I the auction got to $2,650,000 in favour of person 2.
The business end
Unfortunately for person 2, along came person 3. A young couple there with the bank of Mum. Person 2 and 3 battled it out pretty quickly up to $2,840,000. It stalled here as mum was doing calculations on her phone and likely offering to throw in another $10,000 here and there.
At $2,870,000 the bids slowed to $5,000 and later by $2,500.
It seems like the bank of mum ran out for person 2 at this point.
The result
With a final $2,500 bid taking it to $2,880,000 - person 3 is now the new owner of 2 Crown Street, St Peters. Just $20,000 short of the suburb record - almost wish he’d gone for that just for the title!
While a unique home, lets not forget this is almost $1,000,000 over where the price guide started!! In fairness, unique homes in a market with very little stock are very hard to put a finger on for where the price may land. The market has also only started to shift in the last 4 weeks, and has picked up a momentum that was nowhere to be seen in the 2nd half on 2022.
Post auction
Post auction, a spectator asked me why I opened the bidding so high. Here is the thing - I do this 24/7 and I know what a great auctioneer Mr Damien Cooley is. He will build momentum, and he will extract every last dollar out of someone (or their mum!).
I always spend my clients money the same way I would my own, but I’m there to execute a strategy and try get them the outcome that we have discussed prior to auction. Unfortunately, when someone else is willing to pay ~$250,000 more than you, it doesn’t matter how great your strategy is.
