Harold Street Thornbury Auction Review

We managed to sell three properties last week for our vendors, two the previous Saturday and one we decided to sell before auction last Wednesday.

The story I’m about to tell not only sums up the current property market but also what’s required when selling.

Our lovely vendor called a few months ago saying she wanted to sell her property in Thornbury. That part sounded okay but what concerned me is that it was mid-September 2015 and I knew there would be an avalanche of auctions come end of November this year, so we needed to move and be strategic. Before interviewing agents I had to get an idea of where the house was at. You see in a crowded market the best and most eye catching home gets all the attention from buyers, this usually translates to a great price.

Before going on the market I recommended to Helen and her son they consider clearing the home, repaint certain areas, sand the floor boards and professionally style the property. The challenge was we had 2 weeks to get the jobs done and no money upfront to pay for the work.

After some calls and recommendations we used someone who could handle all the work and was happy to wait for payment until the deposit was released, great! The house turned out a treat!

Source: www.barryplant.com.au Auction at Harold Street, Thornbury

It was gleaming inside and out and despite all the competition in the area the buyers were enquiring and inspecting strongly. Over 60 people inspected the property during the campaign with 3 serious contenders.

Come auction day all three interested parties had turned up to bid, the only problem though no one wanted to start the bidding off which meant the auctioneer struggled to get any momentum. Only two of the three interested parties joined in but tried to stymie the auction with slow and small increments. Then a new bidder entered the arena and was holding the highest bid at the vendor’s reserve at $1million.

Rather than sell the property under the hammer we made the decision with the agent to pass the property to the highest bidder and negotiate for more. It was tense, the buyers in one room and all the rest of vendor’s family in the other.

After some toing and froing we managed to extract an extra $50,000 from the buyer, finally selling the home for $1.050mil. We thought the result was very good but didn’t know how good until over the weekend a comparable property sold in 158 Raleigh St, Thornbury for $1.017mil. 

Although the location of that property could be argued was not as good as our property it did have its own driveway, a larger family area, two-way bathroom, decking and carport. A couple of real estate agents noting the high price paid for our property.

All in all we achieved what we had set out to do get the highest market price for the vendor. And our vendor Helen had managed to gain over $500,000 in capital growth in the 10 years she had owned the home, not bad! Now for the next chapter of her life, to downsize and for us to find her something more manageable.

Images source: http://www.barryplant.com.au