If you had a burning desire to live outside on a perfectly flat patch of grass and also had a spare coupla million hiding behind the couch, you’re absolutely shit out of luck. A single tennis court near Melbourne, and some extra undeveloped land attached to it, has sold for the truly eye-watering amount of $1.4 million, in yet another file for the pages of You’re Gonna Be Renting Forever.
The 1,593m² (just under 0.4 acre) property in the fairly fancy Mount Martha suburb of outer Greater Melbourne, down on the Mornington Peninsula, sold at auction recently for $1.4 million, which in and of itself was $100,000 above its initial reserve price, and well above the $1.1m – $1.21m price range that sellers had initially hoped for.
Crucially the court and land has pre-existing architectural plans attached to it, pushing the sale price of the property higher than it may have otherwise been.
The property’s listing boasts that it is “metres from the water’s edge,” although the reality there is that it’s 850 metres from the water’s edge, which is inaccessible by foot due to the craggy rocks lining that part of the shoreline. The nearest accessible beach lies around 2km away.
Per the report from Domain, the buyers – a young couple – were one of two active bidders on the property, and now plan to build a holiday home on the vacant block. Half their bloody luck, really.
Among the raft of restrictions that have been eased across Victoria as the state moves towards its COVID Safe Summer, more people are expected to be permitted to attend real estate auctions as the sector ramps up activity across the coming months.
Location, planning approval, and aspect quite obviously have a lot to do with why this particular block went well above seven-figures. But then again if a tennis court and a half-patch of land next to isn’t going to fetch you much change from $1.5 million, then it may be time to start considering a teepee in Nar Nar Goon for that all-important first home buy.
You’ve gotta start somewhere after all. Good bloody grief.
