88 Church St Camperdown
“Come Rescue Me”; A 2 room “house” with no bathroom, no kitchen and half a roof!
The property
88 Church Street Camperdown is a gorgeous cottage style property from the front, however, behind the facade it is really only half a house. At best. There are two rooms with concrete floors and a roof that is half exposed. There is no bathroom. No toilet. No kitchen. Nothing else. Just two blank rooms. Uninhabitable at this stage.
It is a corner block which definitely makes renovations easier and has some appeal. 95sqm is also a decent size for the old style cottage blocks.
It was sold with a Development Application (DA) approval to add a kitchen, bathroom, living and laundry while retaining the single level. DA approval was granted in May 2019, requiring that work commence before May 2024 (11 months from auction).
The property last sold in 2017 for $905,000. The SMH reported the owner’s had demolished the house with plans to renovate, but due to covid had not continued.
The sales campaign
The sign board out the front really said it all with “Come Rescue Me”! The property was presented on market for four weeks followed by an auction.
Price guide was set at $975,000.
A search of the NSW Land Valuer register from 2022 valued the land at $808,000. For all intensive purposes, the property was sold as just the land given the current state of the few walls and piece of roof.
This pocket of Sydney really doesn’t present many, or any, opportunities to secure a block of land for under $1,000,000 these days, so for those wanting a project, then this was a rare gem. Especially given first home buyers are still under the benefit of choosing an annual land tax until 1 July 2023.
The Auction | 7 active bidders
The long silence of an opening bid…
Auctioneer Charlie Powell did a great job of tying to get the crowd moving at the start after he was met with a long 2-3 minutes of dead silence. A number of registered bidders, but everyone else waiting to see where other people saw value.
The bidding was opened by a young lady at $700,000. Ambitious and low, but accepted as an opening bid.
The bidding absolutely crawled from there to $900,000. It’s not hard to see why people thought they could score an absolute bargain, but was also clear at this price point, the property was not going to be sold under the hammer.
The action is underway
Eventually some momentum hit around the $950,000 mark when 3 serious bidders then decided it was time to play for keeps.
Once it finally got to $1,100,000 the auctioneer asked the agent to confirm instructions, which was met with a “we are selling”, indicating the reserve was at the $1.1m level.
On the market and where too from here…
When you have builders bidding on a property, it is not an emotional scene like a well presented family home. It is a numbers game. Based on what they need to spend on the property, what should they pay to make the profit they need too.
It appeared that $1,100,000 was really that sticking point for the two final bidders.
With a little bit of muster from Charlie, he managed to extract a further $30,000 out of them.
It was finally sealed at $1,130,000. SOLD.
What this result says about the market
It was $322,000 over the land value.
Well presented 2 bedroom homes in Camperdown in the current market are selling for ~ $1.8m. After stamp duty and costs, if they can restore and add a kitchen, bathroom, living area for under $400,000 they will likely do well. Construction does not come cheap these days though. It will be tough to reno and flip for profit, unless the market continues to strengthen.
