A five-bedroom family home in Mount Waverley sold for $1,535,000 on Saturday, with four bidders pushing it over $100,000 beyond its reserve on a quiet grand final auction weekend.
The double-storey contemporary house at 4A Bales Street is just off Waverley Road, and minutes from parks in every direction. It features timber floors, multiple living areas – including a space in the upstairs bedroom area designated a “teenage retreat” in the listing – and an al fresco dining area.
The property was one of 291 scheduled to go to auction in Melbourne this week. By Saturday evening, Domain recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 52 per cent from 178 reported results throughout the week, while 29 auctions were withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate.
The grand final on Saturday and Friday public holiday meant the number of auctions scheduled this week was less than a third of the 918 scheduled last week.
While this means the low preliminary clearance rate is not necessarily indicative, agents warned the threat of another rate hike from the Reserve Bank on Tuesday could lead to more vendors choosing to hold back on selling their properties, further shrinking supply in what is traditionally the busiest period of the year for auctions.
The home at 4A Bales Street had a price guide of $1.35 million to $1.45 million, and a reserve of $1.42 million.
Jellis Craig Mount Waverley agent and auctioneer Calvin Huang said bidding opened at $1.2 million, and moved “pretty quickly” to $1.25 million, jumping up again from there to $1.3 million, before slowing to $25,000 increments through to the close, with four bidders active.
“It was over in 10 to 15 minutes,” Huang said, noting all bidders were owner-occupiers hoping to upsize for their growing families.
The buyers were following in the footsteps of the vendors, who bought the property for $1.48 million less than two years ago, in November 2024, before quickly outgrowing it.
“They bought a bigger house… at quite a bit of a discount,” he said. “That’s that’s why they were happy to be flexible here… And they still ended up getting over $100,000 more than what their reserve price was.”
He thought that a rate hike on Tuesday would probably not be a huge concern to owner-occupiers who were already looking to buy.
“But the whole investor market’s basically gone now,” he said, noting another rate hike wouldn’t help.
In nearby Wheelers Hill, another large family home sold on Saturday morning for $1.4 million, with a view of the historic Waverley Park stadium drawing in four bidders to romp past its $1.3 million reserve.
The four-bedroom home at 13 Cantala Court had a winged layout, with a living and entertaining room at its centre and two bedrooms on each wing complemented by separate family and dining rooms, and gardens on each end of its sloping lot. It had a price guide of $1.25 million to $1.35 million.
Buxton Glen Waverley agent and auctioneer Bruce Liu said bidding opened at $1.15 million, quickly going up in $20,000 increments, slowing to $1000 bids before it reached $1.4 million and finally sold.
The buyers were upsizing and already lived locally, while the vendors were downsizing and “motivated to sell”, Liu said.
Despite the sale soaring $100,000 over the reserve, he thought there were both fewer buyers and sellers in the market since the May budget.
“And maybe from next Tuesday, the interest rate will go up again,” he said. “Suddenly, it creates a difficult situation for buyers.”
In South Morang, a three-bedroom townhouse sold to first home buyers for $500,000 in post-auction negotiations, after passing in on a $490,000 bid.
The home at 2 Pace Circuit was part of a complex built in 2003, which Ray White South Morang agent and auctioneer Nick Petrovski said meant it had “plenty of space, and plenty of opportunity” for first home buyers who wanted to be in a townhouse that was well-connected to public transport and local amenities.
He said the auction opened at $450,000 – $30,000 below the $480,000 to $520,000 price guide.
From there, two bidders pushed the price up in increments of $10,000, before slowing to $5,000 bids, and finally passing in at $490,000, which was just $10,000 short of the $500,000 reserve at which it would eventually sell.
Petrovski said both the winning bidders and the couple who missed out were first home buyers. The vendors are a couple who were retiring and selling the property – an investment – as they “restructured their lives”.
Despite a lack of supply, he said he was still seeing buyers “out and ready to buy”, but acknowledged a rate hike on Tuesday would probably make buyers more hesitant in coming weeks.
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