The Brisbane homes selling at four times the average price
Prestige riverfront homes are headlining Brisbane’s summer selling season as median sale values recover losses incurred following the February floods.
15 Stevens St, Yeronga is going to auction on December 10.
Brisbane’s riverfront median for the six months to September is now $3.925m, Place Advisory data shows, nearly four times the price of an average house in Brisbane, and approaching last year’s high of $4m during the boom.
It has been a lean but competitive year for riverfront homes, with fewer but more prestigious properties coming to market.
154A Virginia Ave, Hawthorne sold for $15m in February.
The top sale of the year was a landmark four-level Hawthorne home belonging to doctor and board games designer Peter Hawes. The 2110sq m property at 154A Virginia Ave fetched $15m just before the February floods.
A riverfront home at 16 Leura Ave, Hawthorne secured the under the hammer auction record for Brisbane when it sold for $10.21m in July.
16 Leura Tce, Hawthorne sold in July.
While 17 Julius St at New Farm sold in 2021 for $6.5m and again in October this year for an undisclosed amount believed to be $2m more.
Ray White, Place Estate Agents and Adcock Prestige Queensland are all taking riverfront homes to market in the final weeks of 2022, including the former Yeronga home of Wallabies great Tim Horan, and the family home of veteran Queensland real estate agent Bruce Blocksidge who passed away earlier this year.
“We have 850 absolute riverfront properties in Brisbane, they are an incredibly sought after commodity,” Adcock Prestige Queensland principal, Jason Adcock, said. “The most expensive homes in Brisbane, if they were to sell today, are on the riverfront.
“We just sold one last week at (71 Robertson St) Fig Tree Pocket on the river for $3.6m. That was passed in at auction a little while ago for $3.4m and we sold that to a buyer who wasn’t there at the time of the auction. They went through on the Thursday and on Friday they bought it.”
15 Stevens St, Yeronga goes to auction on December 10 through Jason Adcock of Adcock Prestige Queensland.
“There are two parts to riverfront property, the ones that were flood affected and the ones that weren’t. And the ones that aren’t flood affected are incredibly sought after and are selling at a premium price, there’s been no reduction in buyers at all. But if I’ve got a flood affected property – very hard to sell.”
Not so, says veteran Brisbane builder Greg Turner who is confident of selling his four-bedroom, four-bathroom home at 29 Brisbane Corso, Fairfield because it has been purpose built to handle a flood.
Best offers for 29 Brisbane Corso, Fairfield are being accepted before Wednesday, December 7 at 1pm
“We lived in the Adelaide Hills and had bushfires and in Cairns and had cyclones,” Mr Turner said. “If you want to live on the Brisbane River and enjoy it, you have to find a compromise.”
Mr Turner’s five-year-old home had 300mm through the bottom level during the February 2022 floods.
“We’ve developed a method of building for floods, I don’t even carry flood insurance on the place. It wouldn’t have been worth it. This house is built to flood. It’s designed to flood. You can clean it out and there’s little damage. It’s not complex. It’s sort of like the old Queenslander style, the whole bottom level is garaging and workshop and a pool deck. There’s polished concrete, aluminium windows, and commercial doors. We have a generator set up for when we lose power. The tiled pool is easy to clean out.”
Mr Turner is using the same design principles to build another riverfront home for a client 10 doors down and said Brisbane’s riverfront will always attract premium buyers.