A one-bedroom, 4.5 metre wide hovel presented as “the ultimate blank canvas opportunity” sold in Sydney over the weekend for $1.62 million, a cool $520,000 over the already-outrageous reserve.
While the Camperdown property is just a stone’s throw from Camperdown Park (the other one, not “Campo”), the sliver of land ended up being more expensive per square metre than the most expensive mansion in Sydney, which sold in Point Piper in 2018.
“It’s a sign of the times,” auctioneer Ben Mitchell said at the time, The Daily Telegraph reports.
“It’s a massive price for what the property is. It’s actually unbelievable.”
Here’s what $1.62 million buys you in Sydney: one small bedroom, one spartan kitchen and a bathroom that is dilapidated beyond use.
Until now, the property was believed to have been home to a squatter. That’s because the previous owner died over a decade ago with no clear plan for what to do with the home.
It was only able to be sold now because the former owner’s next-of-kin, a second cousin living interstate, was finally identified.
Bryan Mahlberg, the LJ Hooker real estate agent who sold the home, said the price was less about the value of the debris scattered in the bathtub, and more about the potential of this narrow plot of land in inner Sydney.
“It’s all about the potential to knock it down and rebuild,” Mahlberg told the NCA NewsWire.
“The block is between two terraces […] The hope is they’ll get a two storey, three bed, three bath, higher spec home on that block.”
So now the long-dead owner’s interstate second cousin is over one-and-a-half million dollars richer, while the Sydney squatter presumably now needs to find somewhere else to live.
Unless, of course, they were the winning bidder.
