9 Messines St, Nandaly, has just been sold for $80,000 – potentially the cheapest price that will be paid for a liveable, if cluttered, home in 2026.
A regional Victorian hoarders home sold for just $80,000 has been tipped to be the cheapest, still liveable, house deal in the country this year.
And, incredibly, the owner of 9 Messines St, Nandaly, passed up a chance to get more for the home after receiving 100 offers for the property that was advertised as “Grand Designs meets Hoarders”.
Listed for sale last year with an asking price of just $59,000, the three-bedroom house came with one notable drawback: it was being sold from the estate of its former resident, a hoarder who had filled it with a significant amount of items over the years.
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While it wound up selling for $21,000 more than expected, the buyers also collected everything that was on the property as part of the purchase — including a caravan and a pair of old cars.
Ray White Mildura’s Brett Driscoll said the home had wound up attracting a staggering 100 offers.
“It was crazy,” Mr Driscoll said.
“I was getting 50 calls a day, plus emails at its peak.”
The sale was delayed for several months by matters of the estate, but a deal has now been finalised and the home is expected be in the hands of its new owners by the end of this month.
The kitchen comes with a fridge and even some food supplies. You might not want to eat them, though.
There are two cars on the premises that were also part of the purchase.
While it was possible the more than 1200sq m property could have sold for more, had the scores of buyers been played off against each other, Mr Driscoll said the home’s owner eventually “just chose one”.
“He just selected one of the offers, so a first-home buyer couple secured it,” he said.
The agent added that he believed the pair intended to clean up the residence, and live there then “see where the property takes them from there”.
Nandaly, a town of about 16 people, is located a few dozen kilometres south east of Ouyen, former home to a national vanilla slice competition, and roughly between Swan Hill and Mildura in Victoria’s north west.
The township hosts a recreational reserve and the Nandaly Community Hotel, that was saved by locals after the shock death of its former publican in 2018.
While once a prominent regional centre, a bypass that ended through traffic for the town has led to the number of residents declining.
But at just about an hour out of Swan Hill, buyers saw plenty of value in the ex-hoarders’ home.
The living room is one of the home’s tidier rooms.
The bedrooms are decidedly more … cluttered.
Real Estate Institute of Australia president Jacob Caine said to buy a house at $80,000 as something the buyer was considering living in, was unheard of.
“I would be gobsmacked if a property that was within the parameters of liveable anywhere in Australia sold for les than $100,000, let alone $80,000, this year,” Mr Caine said.
“It’s incredible”.
He added that the vendor simply choosing a buyer without trying to maximise the price was also an exception to the rule, making the sale even more remarkable.
“You do hear of it, but they are the once in the blue-moon deals where a benevolent vendor decides to forgo maximising their return and instead makes it a generous act to the buying public,” Mr Caine said.
While the buyers are facing a sizeable task in cleaning the home out, it’s possible some of the items left in the home could wind up helping to pay for the skip needed to clean it out – or possibly even lead to the purchasers making a bit of their outlay back.
Prior to the sale Mr Driscoll said the clean out might take “a few weeks”, and the property was advertised as “like Grand Designs meets ‘Hoarders’”.
A caravan on the site was also part of the package.
The bathroom is also a bit of an obstacle course, but the loo does appear to be accessible.
“(But) with the caravan and the cars, that might have a bit of value and you could probably flog them off to pay for the skip,” Mr Driscoll said at the time.
“And you know what hoarders’ homes are like, they can have cash stashed and other bits and pieces hidden around.”
The listing stipulated that only unconditional cash offers would be accepted.
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