Suburban cottage sold for nearly $1M more than its old price at cracker auction event

1 week ago 7
Nicholas Finch

The Courier-Mail

A little cottage in Annerley has sold for more than 6 times what it was worth when it was last on the market, at an auction event on Friday evening.

The house at 23 Caroline St had not been sold since 2002, with the housing market blowing up in the two decades since it was off market.

Place Annerley had the sale an in-house auction event as part of ‘The Day’, taking place from October 16 to October 23.

23 Caroline St, Annerley


With three bedrooms and one bathroom, agents Mitchell Smith and Roxanne Alterio advertised the home as a “renovated pre-war home in [a] prime city-fringing enclave”.

Its location was one of the reasons five bidders registered to stake a claim for the home on the evening.

Three bidders ended up actively competing for the cottage, with a starting bid of $900,000.

Bidding quickly escalated to $1 million, with the eventual underbidder holding a solid lead for most of the proceedings.

But when bidding eventually paused at $1.13 million, he was eventually priced out after private negotiations. The final winners managing to secure the home for $1.132 million: $133,500 under the suburb’s property median.

The home is now worth six times what it sold for in 2002, thanks to an interior renovation and a skyrocketing housing market.


Mr Smith said buying a home for this price at a convenient location was getting more and more rare in 2024.

“That is entry level buying at its best,” he said. “We painted it inside and outside, really made sure that it looked as best as it could.”

The home had last sold for $185,000 in 2002, making it now worth $947,000 more than its last known price.

Its new buyers were a young couple who felt excited to own the home after two months of searching, while being aware of the responsibility that goes into keeping it.

“[The price was] probably where we thought the value was, but also a little higher than we thought we were willing to pay,” they said.

“It’s a good area … probably hope to live there for the next five to ten years.”

Auctioneer Peter Burgin presided over Place’s The Day Auction event on Friday evening.


A total of nine properties were sold as part of the first batch of auctions for Place’s ‘The Day’ event, ending with the Friday night sales.

These included a home in Camp Hill that sold for $2.7 million, a house in Acacia Ridge that sold for $836,000, and an apartment in Coorparoo that sold for $646,000.

This takes place during a huge auction week for the whole country, with CoreLogic reporting more than $2,600 homes up for auction across the combined capitals.

Brisbane alone is expected to have its second-busiest auction week this year, with 231 homes scheduled to be up for grabs.

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