This house at 21 Kurrajong St, Everton Park has sold at auction.
Sydney local Sara Molander did not fly to Brisbane with her eight-week-old son for a play date, even though the front lawn of 21 Kurrajong St, Everton Park looked the part with young families dominating the bidding groups.
Most of the bidding activity was coming from the top of the driveway, where Sara Molander (far right) was standing beside her sister and brother-in-law, who were holding her eight-week-old son while she bid.
Her twin sister had migrated to Brisbane in May last year and with their recruitment company set up to work remotely, Ms Molander was determined to join her in Queensland.
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Brisbane auction results for week ending February 6
“We want to be able to buy a house and we can’t find that in Sydney,” Ms Molander said.
“It doesn’t matter if we’re living in Sydney or Brisbane, we can work remotely and I want to be close to family.”
The ability to work remotely is exactly why Christie and Tom Luxton put their three-bedroom north Brisbane house on the market this year after living there for eight years.
Christie and Tom Luxton have been working remotely since the pandemic started and are moving to the Sunshine Coast for a lifestyle change.
“We are off to Currimundi,” Mrs Luxton said. “We both started working from home since Covid (in advertising and web design) so we realised we could live outside of Brisbane. We were fortunate to find a place just before Christmas, but we’ve been seeing the prices going up and up.”
Within a minute of Ms Molander opening the auction with a bid of $700,000, Place Estate Agents chief auctioneer Peter Burgin had lifted the value of the 607sq m Everton Park property by $200,000 and a few minutes later, at $950,000, he announced the house was on the market and going to sell to the highest bidder.
Place Estate Agent chief auctioneer Peter Burgin calls the auction from the bottom of the driveway at 21 Kurrajong St, Everton Park.
“We had 11 bidders today and most of them were first-home buyers, it’s the market for them out here,” Place Newmarket’s Matthew Jabs said.
“It’s still affordable and it’s close to the city with lots of families. We just need another house like this to sell.”
This was the second auction in two weeks for New Farm couple Jessica and Ben Catts, after holding off buying a property during the frenzied final six months of 2021.
Ben and Jessica Catts with their daughter Mila, 21 months.
“A lot of the heat of the last six months is coming out a bit now, that was putting us off buying earlier, there was just so much competition and some properties were going for extreme prices,” Ms Catts said.
With their second child due in June, the Brisbane couple went up against Ms Molander and stretched their budget to win the auction and buy the house for $965,000, almost $100,000 above the suburb’s median house price.
“That was probably our last bid and it sounds like everyone was at a similar price point,” Mrs Catts said.
Ms Molander will return to Sydney and continue her Brisbane property search from there.
“We started looking online during Covid but when you want to buy something you want to see it as well. It’s been good to physically come up.”
The renovated interiors at 21 Kurrajong St, Everton Park.
The three-bedroom, one bathroom house had been updated since the Luxtons bought it in 2014 for $515,000.
“We put a pool in and did landscaping and put bi-fold doors in for the front balcony so you get this beautiful outlook. We ripped out the carpets and did some painting; just a general spruce up,” Mrs Luxton said.
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