Four parties battled it out for a brand-new five-bedroom home in Canada Bay at auction on Saturday, pushing the sale price to $5.5 million.
The turnkey property with high ceilings at 43 Walker Street was listed with a price guide of $4.9 million, and a crowd of 250 people watched proceedings in the scorching, muggy conditions.
Five parties registered, with four taking part in the auction that was held in the backyard. Bidding opened at $4.8 million and rose in $100,000 bids to reach $5.1 million, where increments slowed to $50,000, $20,000 and $10,000 rises before it sold under the hammer for $5.5 million, meeting its reserve.
There is no legal requirement for a vendor’s reserve to be in line with their property’s price guide.
McGrath’s Tarun Sethi said, “We broke the suburb record there [in Canada Bay].”
“Brand-new home, turnkey proposition, instant solution … Take your shoes off and move right in.”
Sethi said that “despite a common misconception that the market is slowing down due to the interest rate rise, there are no signs of it slowing down”, at least not in the luxury bracket.
The buyer is from the inner west. The vendor built it for themselves but had a “change of heart” and decided to upsize to a property about four times the size. The previous Canada Bay record was $5 million, also for a five-bedder that sold last year.
The property was one of 1283 scheduled auctions in Sydney last week. By Saturday evening, Domain Group had recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 66.5 per cent from 810 reported results throughout the week, while 178 auctions were withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate.
In Neutral Bay, a one-bedroom unit at 16/27A Eaton Street with a guide of $720,000 attracted 11 registrations, of which 10 were hopeful first home buyers.
Bidding opened at $720,000 and four parties placed bids, with rapid rises of $10,000 taking the price above its $750,000 reserve until it reached $800,000.
After that, two parties fought it out with $5000, $1000 and $500 increments until the hammer fell at $840,500 to the only non-first home buyer, an owner-occupier from Campbelltown.
Selling agent Nicolas Boot said: “So the price point was pretty much under the magic $800,000 where stamp duty is exempt, so we had lots of people requesting 5 per cent deposits”.
“It was essentially an unrenovated apartment needing a new kitchen and bathroom … but in a good location. And it was phenomenally popular.”
Auctioneer Ed Riley from the eponymous agency said that “[the] sub-million bracket remains a fiercely contested battleground, driven by buyers determined to secure a foothold close to the city”.
The vendor had owned the property for nearly 20 years. It last traded for $395,000 in 2007, records show.
A three-bedroom house on Sydney’s northern beaches sold for $310,000 above its $3 million guide and reserve, fetching $3.31 million.
The family home is within a stroll of the sand at 27 Palm Road in Newport.
Four parties registered and three took part, all from the northern beaches bar one from out of the area.
Bidding for the deceased estate opened at $2.85 million and rose in $50,000 increments almost the whole way until a few $25,000 bids and $5000 bids came in near the end.
Selling agent Lauren Garner of McGrath Pittwater-Avalon said, “That little pocket of Newport is super close to the beach. So there’s some streets that are considered the Golden Triangle. It’s kind of a tightly held prime position of Newport.”
She added: “Look, it’s a pretty fickle market at the moment, but I think that properties like that on level blocks in great locations, they still perform really well.”
The vendor never lived in the property, but held it as an investment for more than 52 years.
PRD chief economist Dr Diaswati Mardiasmo said Domain’s clearance rate of 66.5 per cent for Sydney has “come down a little bit … but it’s still OK”.
“We’re still seeing Sydney grow, but not as strong as we used to,” she said.
“I think we’re definitely seeing the cash rate hike translating into the clearance market now. I mean, it only happened like the beginning of this month, so I’m not surprised that it’s taken two to three weeks for it to actually start to settle in and be impacting the clearance market or the auction market,” she said.
Mardiasmo expects to see “more of a steady market for the rest of 2026, definitely”.
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