Entire block of Woollahra flats smashes reserve by $2.2m

A block of Woollahra flats sold for $7.2 million — $2.2 million over reserve — at a big auction night in Double Bay.

It was standing room only in auctioneer Damien Cooley’s Double Bay rooms.

“We had 90 bidders register for just 12 auctions, so that’s pretty incredible,” Cooley told the Wentworth Courier.

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Raine and Horne’s head of sales Luke Hogan said: “I’ve never seen so many people!

“Every seat is taken and it’s standing room only!”

One of the eastern suburbs legends of real estate, Bob Guth of BradfieldCleary, said: “I haven’t seen an auction room like that since 1989.”

The block of five flats at 3 Trelawney St, Woollahra, sold for $7.2 million.

Guth and colleague Georgia Cleary achieved the best auction result of the night for the Woollahra block of five flats at 3 Trelawney St.

The block was owned by the late Martha Danos, who had bequeathed the property to St Luke’s Care and the Garvan Research Institute.

Guth and Cleary had a $4.5 million to $4.95 million guide.

Explaining the extraordinary result, Guth says: “As they say, it’s location, location, location.

“This is royal, blue-chip real estate. A block of flats in the consular belt — there’s just not many of them.”

He attributes the huge turnout to the fact that there were five deceased estates in a row in the line-up.

“Australians come to them like bees to a honey pot … there’s a perception that they’ll get them for a good price.”

3 Trelawney St, Woollahra, has attractive gardens.

It’s understood there were 16 registrations. Guth says the buyer was a private family trust that will continue to rent them out. The current gross yield is $150,000 per year.

Guth says the buyers haven’t decided yet whether to renovate. “They’re just glad to have secured it,” he says.

He adds that it is “very good karma” for the buyer that the money was going to such a good cause.

As the Wentworth Courier reported recently, Martha Danos had lived in one of the flats before her recent death.

She’d just celebrated her 100th birthday at Chiswick restaurant.

As Guth told the Courier, her late husband had been in St Luke’s.

The property is set in the heart of the consular belt on 695 sqm of level land.

There are two one-bedroom units, two three-bedroom units and a three to four-bedroom townhouse.

This article from the Wentworth Courier originally appeared as “Woollahra block of flats sell $2.2m over reserve as 90 bidders register at Double Bay auctions”.