A house that sold for a record amount in a once less-than-desirable suburb is proof just how out of reach owning a home is for many Aussies.
When 30 Fuller Street, Mount Druitt, in western Sydney, sold at auction on Saturday for a staggering $2.3 million, even the real estate agent was shocked.
A-Class Estate Agents owner Amir Jahan said the couple who had beat the other four active bidders had fallen in love with the six-bedroom, four-bathroom property.
Mount Druitt is widely considered to be a more affordable area with the median price of a house currently at $965,000.
The staggering price tag of the mansion has all but quashed that perspective – even beating the median price in Sydney which sits at $1,627,625.
Mr Jahan said when the two-level home on a 1020sqm block with a pool first came onto the market, he was bombarded with sarcastic comments.
‘The area is traditionally thought of as being a bit rough,’ he said.
‘No-one believed that this house was there.
‘People were making comments like, “Can I still buy drugs at the train station there?”, and “I don’t have a dirt bike, can I still look at it?”‘
‘One person said, “I’m not a rapper, can I still buy it?”‘
Mount Druitt has built up a dark reputation with the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics revealing in January it was the suburb with the highest crime rate in Sydney.
The area recorded 3,021 serious offences in one year and had the city’s highest number of domestic assaults recording 743 offences and the highest overall break and enter incidents with 257.
‘Mount Druitt is growing,’ Mr Jahan said.
‘Compared to three, four years ago when you said Mount Druitt people would say “I’m scared to go to there”, it’s a totally different place now,’ he said.
‘It’s a nice and decent area. A lot of people are moving there and to St Marys.’
Mr Jahan said you can still get a house for $1million to $1.1million in Mount Druitt, admitting although this is still high for many Aussies, it is now ‘standard’ for Sydney.
‘All I can say is the Sydney market is getting unbelievable. And it is growing everyday,’ he said.
The real estate agent said people will be deflated by the result of the sale price because Mount Druitt is many peoples’ last hope of getting on the property ladder in the city.
‘A lot of buyers are now trying to get into the Mount Druitt area because they think they can get a cheaper property compared to all other suburbs in Sydney,’ Mr Jahan said.
‘And now this property has hit $2.3mill – so where else can they go now to buy a property?’
He said although the house is ‘beautiful’ and spacious, people were still expecting a bargain just because of its address.
‘All the offers coming in were for $1.2, $1.3 million,’ he said.
‘I call them bargain buyers. I get them for every single property that I list.
‘People were trying to use the suburb to bargain.
‘But a lovely couple in their thirties with three kids loved it. They wanted to buy in a different suburb originally, but they just fell for the house.’
The huge mansion is so impressive that had it been in just one or two suburbs over, the sale price would have been $5-$6 mill and $7-$8 mill for another few suburbs away.
Even though Sydney’s new airport is tipped to increase prices in areas like Mount Druitt, the agent said buyers should just get in where they can.
‘With the property market, you can’t lose,’ he said.
The record-high price Mr Jahan achieved for the Fuller Street property comes after September’s PropTrack Housing Affordability Report showed just how unaffordable home ownership is for Aussies.
A household earning the median Aussie income of $112,000 can only afford just 14 per cent of homes for sale across Australia.
This decreased to just ten per cent for homes in NSW.
Out of Greater Sydney’s 658 suburbs, 448 now have a median price that exceeds $1 million, according to Corelogic’s data released at the end of September.
