All the waterfront properties in Sproxton Lane are around 1,600 square metres in size which isn't even half an acre. One such property, with a modern house on it, is currently on sale at $1.825 million.
Another one, with a smaller and older house, sold in recent years for $1.2 million. Yet another buyer thought nothing of spending $950,000 on a small wooden cottage and then buying the adjoining vacant block for an extra $750,000, giving him some 3,000 square metres of dirt with a tiny house on it, all for the princely sum of $1.7 million.
For just a little more money, he could have bought "Riverbend" which has a solid double-storey brickhouse and numerous improvements, and is set on a whole seven acres of absolute waterfront land! I mean, the land area of "Riverbend", divided into seven separate blocks on seven separate titles, plus a separate title over the 20-metre-wide road access along its whole eastern flank, is larger than all the other waterfront blocks in the lane combined. Just to get from the gate to the frontdoor, you walk across the width of three of the other blocks.
And yet, people don't seem to recognise just what a bargain it is. Why?
Methinks it is greed! Rather than viewing all this absolute waterfront land as a private park and a protective buffer against noisy (and nosey) neighbours, they immediately feel challenged to want to subdivide it, to build more on it, to make money out of it.
Well, I can give them the extra seven acres but I can't give them the extra building permits! So, next time they ask, "Can I subdivide?; can I build?", I won't say, "Read my lips"; I'll say, "Read my blog" ☺
