Kenilworth Parade, Ivanhoe Auction Review

No doubt we would see the strength of the property market this weekend when we lined up to bid for a two bedroom villa unit located at 1/7 Kenilworth Pde, Ivanhoe for our investor, Bill.

Perfectly positioned within 100 meters walking distance to the Upper Heidelberg Rd cafes, restaurants, supermarkets and within 400 meters to the Ivanhoe train station, this place was convenient. For those of you who don’t know, an express train from Ivanhoe will take you into Melbourne’s CBD within 20 minutes – not bad?

Photo Source: Miles Real Estate

Quoted at $400 – $440,000 then bumped up to $420-$450,000, this very original two bedroom unit (one of 11 in the block) was in definite need of some love and care.

We’d done the due diligence, taken into consideration the fact that the whole complex was very much neglected and therefore a risk to price. We had also considered the amount of work required to update the property and, most importantly, reviewed the most recent comparable sales. Size and orientation is what this unit had going for it but there was a cap on price.

The auction began with people everywhere, obviously my client and I weren’t the only buyer’s seeing value in the property but at what price? The bidding kicked off with a vendor bid at $420,000 and, although there appeared to be some stalling momentum, continued in bids of $10,000 increments at which point the property was declared on the market at $460,000.

Bidding slowed again, at which point we were holding the winning amount at $485,000. To my surprise another advocate aggressively bid the property up by $5,000 bids surpassing our maximum range and above $500,000. The bidding continued until reaching a final selling price $525,000, which didn’t make a lot of sense when looking at the comparisons, but that’s the strength of the current market for this type of property!