A young local couple snapped up a striking shopfront conversion in Melbourne’s inner west under the hammer last weekend, as more than 1,100 homes went to auction around the country.
The three-bedroom shopfront conversion at 50 Essex Street, Footscray sold at auction for $1.176 million at the weekend, fetching $166,000 above the reserve price.
The property attracted nearly 80 inspections during the campaign and was so popular that the auction was brought forward by a week.
Auction activity has been softer across Australia since interest rates began to rise earlier this year, with the national preliminary clearance rate reaching 43.7% out of 1,176 auctions held last week, according to PropTrack.
The property: The three-bedroom, two-bathroom house at 50 Essex Street, Footscray sold under the hammer for $1.176 million on Saturday 6 June.
The meticulous shopfront conversion comes with exposed brick, timber floors, original features, located just a five-minute walk to Barkly Village.
The three-bedroom house at 50 Essex Street, Footscray sold at auction for $1.176 million. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
Suburb snapshot: Footscray is an inner-city suburb of Melbourne, located five kilometres west of the CBD.
Footscray’s median house price has decreased 1.9% to $912,500 during the year to May, according to PropTrack.
Selling agent Joseph Luppino of Village Real Estate oversaw the campaign and spoke to realestate.com.au about the result.
The shopfront conversion comes with exposed brick, timber floors and other original features. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
What's special about the property?
Around the inner west, there is a bit of demand for these kinds of converted shopfronts or warehouse conversions. I don’t know why exactly, but I think people just like the fact that they’re a little bit unique and definitely different.
One thing that people probably don’t really know is that a lot of these warehouse or shopfront conversions use their land very differently.
The property sold for $166,000 above the reserve price. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
They are often built as far forward on the boundary as possible, which means you end up with a property or yard that feels much larger without actually having the extra land that usually comes with that.
I think what made this one special was the fact that it had that conversion charm and the owners had done a really great job renovating the home internally.
How did the campaign go?
The campaign was initially scheduled for five weeks, and it was supposed to go to auction this coming weekend, but it started quite well. There was good strength in numbers, a lot of repeat visitors, and lots of contract requests.
So we made the decision to bring the auction forward to the weekend that just passed, and that was due to strong interest from buyers throughout the course of the campaign.
Village Real Estate's Joseph Luppino oversaw the Footscray sale. Picture: Supplied
It had above-average numbers through the door, and a lot of that was attributed to the cool factor. Plus, there’s a café next door, so sometimes we just had a bit of a café crowd coming through on a Saturday.
What type of buyers did you see during the campaign?
We met almost every buyer category that you could think of. We had first-home buyers, professional couples, young families, established families, downsizers, and investors.
The only kind of demographic that we really didn’t meet through the campaign was the larger established families. But realistically speaking, every other type of buyer came through the place and again, I think it just comes back to it being a very versatile property.
How did the auction go?
We had two strong, interested buyers, and they were the two that really fought it out.
The first bid was $980,000 and then it went up in $20,000 increments until it got to about $1.05 million, and then it went up in $10,000 increments for quite a bit. It was a young couple from Melbourne that bought the home in the end.
The Footscray home offers three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
Were you surprised by the result?
No, I wasn’t super surprised, but that’s probably because I’ve sold a lot of these conversions and old milk bars and warehouses. It happens too many times; they often just sell for more than what the regular house equivalent would sell for.
It really is just the uniqueness factor; there’s a coolness value that’s attributed to these properties, which is just impossible to put a figure on.
What’s happening in your market at the moment?
There’s mixed feedback depending on who you talk to. We had a pretty strong month of May. We sold 31 properties in the month, so we really haven’t had the challenges that are being touted out there.
The 312 square metre property is located near the popular Barkly Village precinct. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
I can tell you that the better-quality homes seem to be the ones that are performing and actually getting results. Things that look nicer, sharper, cleaner and have more accommodation seem to be the ones that are really winning out.
There’s definitely been an adjustment in values, but as a seller you can see in real time where the values are in the market. I think there are probably a lot of properties out there where they’re maybe not listening to that market feedback, or they’ve still got anticipations or hopes of pricing from markets gone by.
Two groups battled for the Footscray home on auction day. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
I think the buying market that’s out there is not going to buy for the sake of it. There’s no FOMO [fear of missing out], there’s no fear of loss, so it either represents good value and gets purchased, or it probably just gets forgotten about.
Predictions for the area?
The inner west has always been in a bit of a slump from a rental point of view, but it does feel like post-budget that we’ve seen a lot of older rental providers looking to make moves on their homes, which I think, in turn, is going to start to increase the rental yield through the inner west.
The inner west has got so many great features about it, let alone the fact that it’s on the doorstep of the city. It’s still very undervalued in comparison to the eastern neighbours.
I think it’s probably going to start to see a bit of a resurgence in investment values. I don’t think it will come straight away, but I think there’ll be a period in the future where people will start to recognise that the rents around here have gone up, and that the property prices and the rental yields now actually start to make a lot of sense.
The inner west has always been a great place. It’s definitely super family-friendly, and probably very first-home buyer friendly because the price points are a little bit less prohibitive, and it offers a great lifestyle.
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