This Blacktown house sold on the weekend for $840,000.
Fire-ravaged homes blanketed in soot, with rooms clogged by debris and singed timbers, have been attracting a swarm of buyer interest as Sydney’s shortage of shovel-ready building blocks continues to bite.
Agents have reported considerable buyer interest for the uninhabitable homes, with multiple fire damaged homes going to auction last week with lofty prices. One burnt house remains up for sale with a $7.5m dollar price guide.
Most of the interest in the burnt homes has come from buyers wanting to redevelop the sites.
The sales come amid warnings from insurers that reckless household habits and poor battery charging practices are sending more properties up in flames, with devastating results.
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Allianz emerging risks officer Chris Wood said many recent fires were preventable and attributed them to a lack of education about how key battery-powered items like power tools and ebikes should be kept, stored and recharged.
This fire damaged home in Waverley has a $7.5m guide.
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A particularly alarming trend was how many people left devices to charge in cluttered garages unattended for weeks.
“It’s a fire risk in an area of the house surrounded by flammable materials like paints and where there are usually no smoke alarms,” he said, adding that leaving devices to charge indefinitely made them more susceptible to fire.
Surveys by insurance comparison group iSelect revealed 82 per cent of Aussie households had engaged in at least one dangerous habit that could cause fire over the past year, such as leaving cooking unattended or overloading power boards.
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This Auburn house, burnt in a tragic fire, recently sold for $1.44m.
The fire completed destroyed the Auburn house’s roof.
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Houses returning to the market for sale after a fire had varying histories and often the exact cause of the blazes were hard to pinpoint, but nearly all the properties have been hotly received by the market.
Part of the reason was because they offered a blank slate for owner occupier buyers to create a new home with their own personal stamp.
“It’s an opportunity to create something new,” said agent Haynes Wileman of PPD, who is selling a burnt Waverley home with a price guide of $7.5m. The back half of the home was allegedly damaged in a cooking fire.
These opportunities have become few and far between because of shovel-ready block shortages.
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South Penrith, where a fire damaged home recently sold for $820,000.
Real estate agent Ali Khanchedar inspects fire damage on a home on Pindari Dr in South Penrith.
Housing Industry Association economist Tim Reardon noted Sydney had fewer available blocks for building than Perth, despite having more than double the population.
“There aren’t enough,” he said. “Local councils do not have the right incentives to bring more land to the market. It remains expensive.
“State government has introduced a system to make land cheaper to service but the steps taken today will only be reflected in five to 10 years.
“A lot of the land that’s released today was planned way back during the GFC. It takes a long time.”
Housing Industry Association figures showed Sydney’s median lot size has grown to $685,000, up from $409,000 in 2015, but the median lot size has shrunk over the same period from 450sqm to 388sqm.
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These burnt lots at 279-281 West Botany Street, Banksia, are set to go to auction.
Starr Partners agent Greg Okladnikov recently sold an Auburn house burnt in a tragic fire and said there was considerable interest. Eight parties registered to bid at the December auction and the home, with no roof, sold for $1.44m.
“We got calls within two minutes of listing,” he said. “Opportunities to build in this pocket are exceptionally rare.”
Similar homes have sold in South Penrith and Mount Druitt over recent months.
A burnt Blacktown house went to auction this weekend and sold for $840,000.
This burnt Dixon St home Mount Druitt recently sold for $921,000.
Listing agent Rachana Singh of Ray White said she could not reveal the cause of the fire.
It’s one of the most heavily damaged properties to come up for sale in recent years, with listing images revealing an interior of blackened walls, scorched furniture and frayed ceilings hanging from what little is left of the roof beams.
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