‘They were taken by the character’: Family pays $1.7m for architectural gem

An Eltham home designed by an architect sold for $1,703,000 at auction on Saturday to a young family appreciative of its character.

The Alistair Knox-designed house at 35 Floriston Grove is made from mud brick, handmade brick and reclaimed timber, and has floor-to-ceiling windows offering nature views – all features of Knox’s bush modern style .

The property was one of 768 scheduled to go to auction in Melbourne last week. By Saturday night, Domain recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 63 per cent from 533 reported results throughout the week, while 68 auctions were withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate.

The Eltham house dates to 1976 and includes five bedrooms and a separate home office, and was listed with a price guide of $1.6 million to $1.7 million.

Four parties registered to bid and two were active. Bidding began at $1.5 million, by a buyer’s advocate representing the winner.

A vendor bid was placed at $1.6 million and then two parties traded offers of $20,000 at first, then $10,000 bids, and later reduced offers to as small as $500.

The bidding crept $3000 past the reserve of $1.7 million, and the home sold. The winners are moving into the area to be closer to family.

“They were pretty taken by the character of the home,” Jellis Craig Eltham selling agent Tom Kurtschenko said.

“There’s certainly people in market who are looking and waiting for the right home. Everyone was very appreciative of the style and design.”

Kurtschenko noted the reclaimed timer and mud brick and said the sellers – a family with grown children – had kept the home’s original character but modernised it. The underbidder was a local young couple.

“There’s definitely buyers out there but they’re a bit more price-sensitive now, they’re not just throwing money at everything,” he said.

In Cheltenham, a young family from Keysborough was the sole bidder for a contemporary house and bought it for $2.34 million at auction.

The five-bedroom home at 39 Stuart Avenue was listed with a price guide of $2.25 million to $2.35 million.

The family made a genuine bid of $2.25 million, the bottom of the price range, before a vendor bid was placed at $2,275,000, and the auction paused.