Courtney Caulfield of Place Kangaroo Point at 48 Latrobe Street, East Brisbane, which sold for $1.1m to a Sydney investor. Picture: Annette Dew
You can still buy around the $1m mark close to the CBD if you look hard enough – making Brisbane spectacularly great value compared to Sydney and Melbourne and one of the main reasons some inner city postcodes are super hot.
Nowhere has Brisbane’s strong pull for interstate buyers been more evident than the fact that you could still buy a house for around the $1m-mark within the coveted 3km ring around the CBD this year.
Courtney Caulfield of Place Kangaroo Point said houses in inner city suburbs like East Brisbane were undervalued considering the alternative not just in cities like Sydney and Melbourne, but also within Brisbane itself.
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48 Latrobe Street, East Brisbane was marketed by Place Real Estate.
She sold 48 Latrobe Street, East Brisbane – a three bedroom cottage on a 354sq m block – for $1.1m to a Sydney investor, saying it was fantastic value considering the growth that postcode 4169 has coming to it.
“Where can you buy a house in Australia for a million dollars where you can walk to the city, it’s unheard now. You spend the same amount of money in Mt Gravatt East at the moment,” she said.
“East Brisbane is relatively undervalued, it has a lot of opportunities for people who want to be close to the city. A lot of people buy there because of Churchie, people coming from Sunnybank and Rochedale are buying there to not have to deal with traffic. You can find houses for a million.”
With non-riverfront homes fetching as much as $4.8m, Ms Caulfield said there was much “future value uplift” in homes selling around the $1m mark.
The owner of 48 Latrobe Street had bought the house for $534,000 five years ago and put in a “minor renovation” to get it up for sale at $1.1m.
“There’s no pool but that’s a future value uplift. There are houses in East Brisbane that sold for $4.8m non-riverfront so whatever you put in, you’ll easily get it back. With Cross River Rail and the Gabba, the Olympics and all those things coming to 4169, this is a great suburb for growth.”
In the past year around six house sales even dipped under the million-dollar mark in postcode 4169 – 31 Latrobe Street $965,000 in October, 31 Burlington Street $935,000 and 71 Latrobe Street $828,000 in September, 11 Withington Street $950,000 in August, 947 Stanley Street $825,000 and 37 Sinclair Street $1,075,000 in June.
31 Latrobe Street, East Brisbane was sold for $965,000 by LJ Hooker Kangaroo Point’s Alastair and Wendy Bell.
31 Latrobe Street, East Brisbane went for under a million with room to grow the two bedder on the 354aq m block.
John Kalaja of Professionals West End said inner Brisbane had passed the point of no return, with it “virtually impossible to find a house under $1m” in his area.
“The only possibility is if the house was in very, very bad condition or on a main road or railway line or particularly small for some reason. That is the only way you would see a house in the inner city sell for $1m or less,” he said.
“In our market, a lot of the properties that have been under $1.5m have had upwards of 40 per cent price growth. It’s been staggering. Our starting prices locally are around $1.4m and that’s just the starting point.”
One of his recent sales was a two bedroom cottage with no garage on a 405sq m block at 15 Crowther Street, West End, that sold by negotiation for $1.315m — considered a great price for the buyer given the location, a short walk to shops and restaurants.
While they are becoming harder to find, there are still houses selling under the million mark in inner city suburbs – but they require significant work to get them up to the rest of the neighbourhood.
Comparatively, 28 Corbett Street, West End, on a 268sq m block, sold for $1.13m in May — a price now considered a rarity given recent house sales in November in the suburb went from $1.551m for a Queenslander in original state (2471 Montague Road, 405sq m block) to $2.615m for a fully renovated three level luxury home (285 Gray Road, 405sq m).
Of 73 Brisbane Inner City houses that pop up in search results on realestate.com.au as being for sale, only seven filtered around the $1m-ish mark – four of which are already under contract with three going to auction in coming days.
Leon Iconomidis of Property Inc. Estate Agents West End said locals were also very active in the house market, with his recent sales including 25 Paris Street, West End, a three bedder on a 253sq m block that sold for $1.41m before auction.
“You’d be hard-pressed to find even fixer-uppers now in the inner city around the $1m mark,” Mr Iconomidis said.
203 Hale Street, Petrie Terrace – a two bedder with one bathroom and one car space – was sold for $900,000 by Nicholas Hall of Ray White Paddington.
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One of the rare ones in Petrie Terrace — taken to market by Nicholas Hall of Ray White Paddington — was 203 Hale Street which went for $900,000.
“It has six lanes of traffic out the front. The only thing under a million is something right on Hale Street which is a lot of work essentially. The position is not as good as the other houses but the price was still $900,000,” Mr Hall said
Coming from Melbourne originally, he said Brisbane’s inner city was comparatively much cheaper than anything like it in Sydney and Melbourne, even though prices for inner city houses had jumped 25 to 30 per cent.
“You’re only getting 20 properties a year coming on to the market out of 600 in that area. They are rare so they’re popular because there are very few of them. People want to live close to the city where there are a lot of amenities. Vacancy rates are very low in that area.”
He said downsizers wanting the inner city lifestyle without body corporate fees were drawn to houses no matter how small the blocks were.
“Not everyone wants to pay body corporate, the next option is a freehold house close to the CBD, Petrie Terrace, Milton, the Valley, they are small lots, small houses, but freehold. It’s ideal.”
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The post Houses just a stone’s throw from the CBD for around a $1m appeared first on realestate.com.au.