Place Bulimba lead agent Rachel Fechner with the new owners of 2 Goddard St, Balmoral, Billie-Jo Crawford and Tony Roberts.
FOUR properties worth a combined $14m sold within two hours at a prestige inner-city Ray White auction event in Brisbane on Saturday, with desperate buyers throwing bids as low as $500 into the ring to secure their new home.
But it was a $10,000 bid on a Balmoral property two hours earlier that told of the struggle of everyday Australians to find a home. The three-bedroom Queenslander at 2 Goddard St, Balmoral had been owned by the same couple for 25 years.
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The house at 2 Goddard St, Balmoral that went to auction on Saturday.
A caravan in the front yard told of their plans to become more mobile, but as Place auctioneer Paul Curtain welcomed the crowd of 50 to the auction, the couple stood motionless in the house and watched through the window as 19 bidders took their home to auction.
Auctioneer Paul Curtain with Place Bulimba lead agent Rachel Fechner standing near the caravan to begin the auction of 2 Goddard St, Balmoral.
A couple from Palm Beach on the Gold Coast, stood under a 50-year old Poinciana tree in support of their daughter who had sold on the Gold Coast two years ago and was renting while she looked for her new home. The opening bid of $900,000 came from this party with paddle number 23. “We’ve been doing this for over a year now,” the woman’s mother said. “I’m retired on the Gold Coast so I scroll realestate.com.au. I ring up to find out what it is, then she’ll drive past it and if she likes it, we’ll go to the auction.
“The problem is when you get here the price is $200,000 or $300,000 over what they say it should go for.”
The kitchen and main living areas.
Four other bidders took that lead and raised the bidding to $1.275m before a man with a black mask and a beard raised paddle number 10 and increased the bid by $10,000 to $1.285m.
The last time Tony Roberts threw $10,000 at something he really wanted it was to secure two plane tickets to move from London to Brisbane in December. “It hasn’t been easy,” Mr Roberts’ partner Billie-Jo Crawford said. “We haven’t had an address since we moved to Brisbane. We’ve been looking solidly for six or seven months. We’re staying with my parents in Capalaba but Tony’s family has a lot of history in this area, and there are streets in Hawthorne that are named after his family.”
The battle for the house continued in jumps of $5000 between the opening bidder and the returning expats. The property was announced on the market at $1.31m and sold four bids later to the Aussie expats from London for $1.33m.
2 Goddard St, Balmoral new owners
Mr Roberts is now walking distance from the Hawthorne streets of Peshen and Ison, named after his coach-building and blacksmithing family who were among the suburb’s earliest settlers.
2 Goddard St, Balmoral was the original farmhouse in the area just after the turn of the century.
The post Four homes sell for $14m but the Balmoral house was priceless appeared first on realestate.com.au.