By Ewen McRae
A St Albans property has bucked the trend of falling real estate prices by setting a new residential sale record for the suburb.
The house, at 73 Alfrieda Street, sold on September 10 for $2.52 million after an auction that lasted nearly an hour.
Ray White St Albans sales executive Minh Tran said a strong figure was expected for the sale, but the final amount came as a shock.
“The vendor was looking for $1.9 million, so they were shocked to get what they did, but obviously very happy as well,” Mr Tran said. “In the last couple of years, we’ve auctioned 80 Alfrieda Street at $1.81 million, and 82 Alfrieda Street for $1.68 million, so even for the area that this property was selling in, this was a very strong result.
“We hoped that we could get over $2 million for this property, but to sell it for $620,000 above the reserve was an amazing result.”
There were 10 bidders on the day, with a mixture of investors, developers and families looking to buy the four-bedroom house on a corner block.
The winning bid was from an investment buyer. The sale set a new record for a single block in the suburb.
“That’s the new benchmark for the suburb,” Mr Tran said. “St Albans is becoming a very attractive place for buyers now as it’s so close to everything like shops, the hospital, schools, the freeway. And it’s not far to the city, so it’s a great location.
“Having said that, I don’t think we’ll see this record broken for a while – a block of this size on a corner block doesn’t come around very often.”
