Is this the Woman from Snowy River or just some misguided sartorial taste? Anyway, it confirms the rumours I had already heard that 5 Sproxton Lane was going to come up for sale. It was Nelligen's first million-dollar sale when it sold for $1.2 million in February 2012 (the previous owners, Pam & Jack, having bought it fourteen years earlier for $240,000, had quintupled their money).
And here it is again, to be auctioned on 12 October 2023 - click here. It'll be interesting to see what it sells for, as it would become the benchmark for all the other properties in Sproxton Lane - and a starting point for "Riverbend" which is so much larger and better, even if I say so myself.
Putting this sale in the hands of a Canberra agent seems the way to go, and so I dropped them a short note: "Interesting to see this property come up for auction; its sales price would certainly set a new benchmark for properties in this lane as the last sale was several years ago. I am not a potential buyer but a potential seller as I own the 7-acre property known as "Riverbend" at 35 Sproxton Lane. So far I have stayed away from local agents as properties of this sort and at this price find their buyers not locally but in Canberra or Sydney, so don't be surprised if I contact you again once the auction result is known (any idea on the reserve price?)"
P.S. Had word back from the agents: they expect to sell from between $1,800,000 to $2,000,000. Let's see what happens on 12 October.
P.P.S. It sold for $1,688,000 which is no bargain for a fairly plain house, but the unimproved land value is already $1,310,000. According to the agents, there were three registered bidders but only two active ones, one of whom was Jason Hoang who had previously been interested in "Riverbend" but couldn't afford the price tag. I kept in touch with him and he tells me that he was bidding online from London where he was on business at the time of the auction. He dropped out at just a little over $1.6million which may help to explain the low price of $1,688,000 because an auction is not competitive but comparative: the successful bidder is the one who bids just one dollar more than the second-highest bidder even though he may have been prepared to pay quite a bit more.
