CoreLogic research showed Sydney’s median home price fell 8.9 per cent over 2018, but buyers still spent millions on surprising properties — some uninhabitable.
They included homes with dangerous defects, others left vacant and abandoned for years and partially completed residences that required hundreds of thousands of dollars to get finished. One of the most rundown properties to sell in recent months was a three-bedroom house on Juliet St in Enmore. It is described by the selling agent as the “Angkor Wat home”. It was given that title due to the trees growing across the collapsing structure of the home, which were similar to the tapestry of roots growing through the ruins of Cambodia’s famous Angkor temple complex.
McGrath selling agent Damien West told The Daily Telegraph shortly after the property was listed that it was the most derelict property he had ever seen. “I don’t think you can get much worse than this,” he said. The Juliet St terrace went on to sell without a car space for $1.255 million.
The sale followed even bigger results in nearby Stanmore, where uninhabitable homes on Stanmore Rd and Railway Avenue sold for $1.46 million and $1.41 million respectively. The latter property was listed packed with the previous owners’ possessions, including an old mattress and books. Walls were riddled with deep cracks and parts of the floors and ceiling had collapsed.
But it wasn’t just rundown properties that fetched surprising prices over the past year. A single basement car spot on Challis Ave in Potts Point sold for $210,000, higher than the price of many of the homes in regional NSW.
And despite the past year of price falls, Sydney house values remain more than $200,000 higher than those in Melbourne even though the cities have similar average wages.