‘It all fell apart’: Upper north shore Hamptons-style home passes in at auction
A six-bedroom home at Mount Kuring-gai passed in on Saturday when the sole bidder failed to attend, citing delays associated with Friday’s Microsoft outage.
Two parties were expected to register to bid for 5 High Street, but the strongest bidder was not confident about doing so without seeing the requested changes in the contract documents before the auction.
The Microsoft outage hit Australia early Friday morning and affected Copilot, Teams and Microsoft Outlook, resulting in issues accessing and sending emails.
“It all fell apart because the solicitors couldn’t talk to each other,” sales agent for Stone Real Estate, Dean Finch said. “I ended up having to send things through WhatsApp to get the changes requested.
“But they were still not confident [about bidding].”
The auction was held but closed without a bid, although a second party arrived after the auction ended. Both groups were families from the wider local area.
The property had a listed guide of $1.95 million and a reserve of $2.3 million.
There is no legal requirement for a vendor’s reserve to be in line with their property’s price guide.
Finch is hoping to sell the two-storey Hamptons-inspired home in the next fortnight, but if he is unsuccessful, he said the vendors, who want to downsize, will rent it out.
The property was one of 646 scheduled to go to auction in Sydney this week.
In Enmore, a two-bedroom apartment sold under the hammer for $1.34 million, $10,000 below the reserve.
Five groups registered to bid for the keys to 7/159 Enmore Road, which is positioned just steps away from the popular Enmore Theatre.
Four parties actively participated with bidding opening at $1.25 million. It went up in increments of $10,000 and $20,000 until it reached $1.32 million.
Ray White Erskineville agent Ercan Ersan then negotiated with the bidder to make an additional offer of $1.33 million, and it was called on the market. The opening bidders made a further bid of $10,000 and the property sold.
The two-bedroom apartment is at the back of the block of the Encore on Enmore building and has views across to ChatswoodDomainIt had a guide of $1.3 million and a reserve of $1.35 million.
The successful bidders were a brother and sister who plan to use the property as a city bolthole and rent it as short-term accommodation. The underbidder was a first home buyer bidding with the assistance of her mother.
Ersan said he had noticed more interest from investors in recent weeks.
“My last three auctions all had some investor activity,” he said. “They tend to come back where they see value and prices have now reached that level. If we’re not [at the bottom of the market], we’re pretty bloody close.”
Property alerts are now available in the SMH app. Turn them on to receive the latest market news and trends.
You have reached your maximum number of saved items.
Remove items from your saved list to add more.
Share full article with anyone — no subscription needed to read it. It won't deduct your gift credits. Learn more
