March 2013
1 post
Radical Terrace on Hiatus
Ahoy Radical Terrace readers, I’m going on a hiatus for a bit. Hopefully I’ll be back soon; especially when I think of all the awesome connections I’ve been fortunate enough to establish with Australian property junkies, history geeks, urban planning aficionados, and the like. I shudder to think of denying myself the privilege of further contact with you all!
In my absence, here...
February 2013
5 posts
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Another Harcourt Street Listing Emerges With...
‘Katoomba’, a c1883 Victorian mansion on the über prestigious Harcourt Street in Hawthorn East has come to market with bullish $10m+ hopes, according to Domain.com.au. It’s a rare event that two ‘original’ homes on Harcourt Street are both on market at the same time, but that is indeed the case since Federation mansion ‘Talana’ at the entrance to this...
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Prestige Slip in South Yarra? Or Just Good Old...
‘Risby’, an immaculately well-kept c1887 High Victorian fronting Fawkner Park in South Yarra, has listed for auction with “expectations around $4m”, just two years after trading for $4.31m. Even more surprising, the interiors seem to have been refreshed since then (or at least a darker stain on the wood floor was implemented with some landscaping improvements). The quick...
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'Rosehill Farm' in Prime Kangaloon Lists for $6.7m
Rosehill Farm, a 111-acre Southern Highlands property with a neo-Georgian manse, has listed for $6.7m. The property - situated at the end of Kia Ora Lane in Kangaloon, one of the region’s most prestigious pockets - was acquired in 2004 for $1.45m as a vacant piece of land that included creek-frontage, a pocket of rainforest, and a unique vistas of tree-filled hillsides. The owners then...
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Brighton Victorian Villa Lists for $5m Two Years...
‘Rolvenden’, a c1888 Victorian villa on nearly a half acre block at 139-141 New Street came to market this week. What is surprising is that the asking price is $2m less than the property’s $7.0m sale price back in 2010. Surprising to the Radical Terrace, the listing agent actually responded to our pricing enquiry letting us know that they “don’t have market feedback as...
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$11m Toorak Listing Weirdly Makes No Mention of...
An aerial image of 8 Whernside Avenue (above) revealing its prominent central courtyard (a feature shared with its next-door neighbour); a floor plan of the courtyard home is below; also note the crazy tennis rivalries that must abound on the block…
A home that’s always piqued our interest from our Google Maps trolling has come to market, revealing itself and its prominent and...
January 2013
7 posts
7 tags
A Renovated (and Rare) Freestanding Paddington...
Freestanding homes in Paddington are certainly unique, as are those with pools, two features that make the c1888 cottage a notable new listing. Even more striking for the Paddington enthusiast is the home’s situation at 4 Cooper Street, a rarely traversed cul-de-sac notable for its hodge-podge collection of apartment blocks, the heritage-listed mansion now known as the Scottish...
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Well-Executed - But Controversial - Cremorne Point...
7 Green Street’s front edifice today (above); and at the time of its Oct 2009 sale for $1.53m (below).
7 Green Street, just a tennis ball’s throw away from the east side of the quant Cremorne Point Foreshore path, will auction off in February with expectations in the high-$3mil range. The newly-constructed home is uniquely positioned for the peninsular suburb where most homes sit...
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Palm Springs Meets Palm Beach in Chenchow...
Chenchow Little, a cutting edge architecture firm that’s churned out some impressive residences in the last 8 years since forming, designed a single-storey home high on the Bynya Road ridge in Palm Beach that features backcountry views. That home, located at number 60 directly across the road from Jonah’s Restaurant, has just come to market with $3m+ expectations. A steal for the...
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Edwardian Harbourfront in Point Piper Lists with...
One of the last ‘original’ Edwardian homes on the Point Piper waterfront has officially listed with $30m+ price expectations. Located at #60 on Wunulla Road, the more understated of Point Piper’s dueling waterfront cul-de-sacs, the home was first called Ni-No-Nan after its 1912 construction, a name that has thankfully been lost in time. Historically, the home is significant as...
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Two Listings in Mid-Century Block Looking to...
The exterior of the recently renovated ‘Mornington’ block at 3 Campbell Parade.
Back in 2010, hot on the heels of several big ticket sales at The Bondi at 152 Campbell Parade and with several other prestige developments in the works, the residents of the mid-century ‘Mornington’ block at 3 Campbell Parade banded together to refurbish their building to ensure its...
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'Once Upon A Time' Was Once in Potts Point, Now in...
‘Once Upon a Time’ during its first decade of life on the harbourfront in Potts Point (above), and as seen today along the Neutral Bay harbourfront (below).
In November, the Radical Terrace highlighted an beautifully prototypical apartment in the iconic Wyldefel Gardens complex in Potts Point. Although the bulk of that piece focused on the block’s pioneering use of modernism,...
December 2012
15 posts
8 tags
Two Terraces for the Price of Three in Woollahra
A pair of adjoining terraces at 71-73 Moncur Street in Woollahra have listed together with expectations over $3.6m. Such pricing is bullish when considering some other comparables on Moncur Street, especially on the north side of the street.
The more desirable portion of the street is the two petit blocks between Queen and Oxford Streets which lack the ear-splitting 389 bus roaring past and...
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Traingulated Ermin Smrekar-Designed Postmodern...
San Remo, a town perhaps best known for being where the Phillip Island Bridge connects with the mainland, may soon have a different claim to fame: the region’s most expensive home. 135 Punch Bowl Road, an Ermin Smrekar-designed home that sits on just shy of 20 stunning acres of cliff top land overlooking the Bass Strait in bucolic isolation, is looking to be that home. Listing agents Matt...
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Dwell Magazine Tells Us What We Already Know:... →
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Cliveden Mansions Floor Plans And More!
‘Cliveden Mansions’ after its early-20th century conversion to apartments (above); ‘Cliveden’ as Sir William Clarke’s single family home as it appeared from 1887-1909, without its top floor addition.
Just for fun, we dug up the floor plans to the now-demolished Cliveden Mansions apartment block. It’s an important piece of Melbourne real estate history, if only...
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'Lady Love' Needs $2.4m And A Whole Lotta Love
In October 2009, the current owners of 9 Belvedere Avenue in Wheelers Hill acquired a Neo-EveryStyle mansion in a vaguely unfinished state for $1.035m. Now, after three years and a hefty investment to transform the interiors into a confused Las Vegas hotel bathroom, the home returns to market as unfinished as it began, this time with an asking price around $2.4m. The mansion covers the vast...
4 tags
Name That Street Seen Here in 1913: High Street,...
Well, the trams still exist on this suburban Melbourne street, as does the park on the left (north); the first Victorian villa on the right (south) side of the street also remains. However, what appears to be a green space on the south side (adjacent to the intact house) is now a large apartment block. The first home seen on the north side of the street just past the park still exists but is...
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Prefab Done Right in Foxground for $3m+
A prefabricated home designed in 2004 by Studio Internationale has hit the market in Foxground with $3m+ expectations. The owners of the home commissioned Studio Internationale after holidaying in an earlier prefab design of the studios, the Sojourn Cabins, nearby on the South Coast. The resultant home was a refinement on Studio Internationale’s Platform1234 building system, and it’s...
8 tags
Alison Coopes Continues to Mock the English...
At some point in time, Alison Coopes agency decided that instead of providing concrete listing details (such as the size, location, age, or price of a home), it would dance around the facts with verbose and grammatically incorrect writing to paint some impressionistic painting of a home’s truth. This trend continued today with a listing in Darling Point that’s presumably a house.
...
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Iconic Bellevue Hill Apartment Block Strata...
An iconic piece of mid-century architecture has been redeemed! After a steady decline from its 1957 construction, the ‘Baxter’ apartment block at 85 Drumalbyn Road in Bellevue Hill has been refurbished by a property developer under the design of architects Melocco & Moore with interiors by degin firm SJB. The block of apartments sold for $4.4m in Nov 2011. Almost immediately...
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Spanish Mission in Sydney Real Estate
“Boomerang”, the 1926-28 Neville Hampson-designed Spanish Mission mansion in Elizabeth Bay that solidified the desirability of the style amongst Sydney’s elite.
In the first 20 years of the 20th Century, a renewed interest in California’s (and to a lesser extent Florida’s) Spanish Colonial past was sparked and the outcome was the widespread use of Spanish Colonial...
7 tags
Pakenham's Very Own 'Bona Vista' for One-Tenth the...
Back in 2010, one Melbourne’s most historically significant estates - ‘Bona Vista’ in South Yarra - traded hands for $10.5m, a low figure for its one acre of land at the end of prestigious Kensington Road (but a high figure by all stretches of the imagination. So if you couldn’t afford Bona Vista’s $10.5m price tage, a property in Pakenham that bares a striking...
November 2012
28 posts
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Pakenham Bachelor's Pad for $5m+
A thoroughly unique listing came to market in Pakenham Rythdale this week. Called “The Dale”, the 7-bedroom abode comes with “breathe-taking [sic]” views over the property’s 129 flat acres and an internal floor plan that epitomizes the pre-domesticated lifestyle of a bachelor. What classifies as a bachelor’s pad, you ask? The Radical Terrace would like to...
7 tags
Malvern Home in Prestigious 'Stonnington Estate'...
The construction of the Stonnington Mansion in 1890 on the non-Toorak (east) side of Glenferrie Road provided the future growth of Malvern with a cachet not initially guaranteed. Before Stonnington, growth in Malvern in the mid-19th C initially concentrated near High Street and Wattletree Road in the southern portion of the city. The northern portion featured a small handful estates that spilled...
6 tags
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Bidding Adieu to Vaucluse's Shortest-Lived...
Yet another Vaucluse harbourfront for sale…
Only a year after the Blundy Family assembled a $25.7m Vaucluse compound by buying two properties, one of the two homes has listed with $20m+ expectations. 8 Wharf Road was acquired for $17.75m in 2011 at the same time the new owners purchased next-door neigbhour 58 The Crescent for $7.95m. The acquisition provided the Blundys with over 2,000sqm...
6 tags
An Original 'Marine Villa' Lists in Glebe for $4m+
An 1877 Victorian Italianate on the Rozelle Bay waterfront listed in Glebe today with a price guide north of $4m. The “marine villa” is a fun property to analyse, as it indicates many of the driving factors of the rise, fall, and rise of prestige in Glebe.
Sydney’s first true suburb of substantial villas was undoubtedly “Darlinghurst Hill”, an area that now...
10 tags
Quick Flip for a Mullet House in Brighton
The front (above)…and the back (below).
It was only in January 2011 that ‘Lothlorien’ at 29 Sussex Street in Brighton traded hands for just over $3.7m. Now, the property is back on the market with price expectations hovering around its last sale price. The 5-bedroom home maintains its c1890 High Victorian facade in the front but takes a crazy post-modern turn at the rear....
6 tags
Toorak Home Channeling Chinese Buyers
The title says it all, “Lucky Number 8”. Ascend Real Estate agents Eric Cheung and Chen Sun are going straight after those whom associate the number 8 with good fortune in their marketing of a modern property at 8 Woodside Crescent in Toorak. The parcel of land sold for $1.15m in 2003, and the current owners then built a 4-bedroom, 3-bathroom home modern home. Aside from an engaging...
4 tags
One of Cremorne Point's Priciest Homes Up for Rent
31 Milson Road, a single family home nestled amongst the prestige apartment blocks and federation homes of Cremorne Point, listed for rent for $4,000 per week. The Neo-Georgian 4-bedroom home nearly broke suburb records when it sold for over $7.8m in Feb 2008, a massive sum especially considering the home’s small parcel and location on the inland side of Milson Road. Then again, look at...
8 tags
Paul Bangay Designed THIS?!?
A Tullamarine Airport-adjacent home in the Melbourne exurb of Bulla came to market this week with bullish $3m+ expectations. Apparently, the gardens of the property (called “Monteigne”) were designed by Paul Bangay, an Australian landscape architect who finds his way into the gardens of just about every trophy listing to come to market. However, based on the listing photos at least,...
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A Rare Loser in South Yarra: What Once Was $4.5m...
It’s never a good thing to sell a home for less than your purchase price. And, to be honest, it’s a bit surprising to find such an example in South Yarra. Nonetheless, they do exist as is evidenced with the recent listing of 9 Kensington Road. The home was purchased by its current owners for $4.5m in April 2010 and now agents Mark Wridgway and Jeremy Fox of RT Edgar are shopping...
6 tags
An Original Bungalow in Caulfield North Seeking...
Prior to the First World War, the area now referred to as Caulfield North was characterised by a small handful of significant Victorian mansions (Labassa, Grimwade House, and Rosecraddock, to name a few), market gardens, and a few hubs of inconsequential homes along the primary thoroughfares. The quick and dramatic expansion of Melbourne’s suburbs in the interwar years saw the development...
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A Real "Green Roof" in Tamarama on the Hunt for...
Who doesn’t love a sustainable, aesthetically-pleasing green roof? Certainly not the owners of this Tamarama “penthouse” who transformed a 70sqm terrace into a grass-filled, view-dominated garden. Steven Chen and Cameron Porter of McGrath - Eastern Suburbs have the Fletcher Street listing that is noticeably lacking in interior photos. However, the floor plan is provided and...
12 tags
Mornington Peninsula's Western Port: Does It Have...
Two listings currently on the market on the Western Port-facing section of the Mornington Peninsula have allowed for a long-standing question of ours to resurface: could this stretch of coastline usurp the jam-packed bayside suburbs of Portsea and Sorrento as **the** priciest coastal escape for Melburnians? It’s a difficult question, of course, for a multitude of reasons, and not just...
15 tags
Wyldefel Gardens: We've Been Waiting For You
Wyldefel Gardens shortly after its 1936 construction (above); and today, note the complex was robbed of its harbour frontage by the reclamation of land connecting Garden Island to Potts Point by the Navy during WWII.
In 1943, during the Second World War, the Australian Navy reclaimed land between Garden Island and Potts Point. The development robbed the Potts Point of the suburb’s most...
10 tags
Point Piper's House of Many Sales Lists Again for...
It’s not every day that a piece of Wolseley Road comes up for sale…or is it? 42 Wolseley Road has traded hands no less than six times in the past 14 years. It’s most recent sale in 2010 for $11.75m came after it shopped offers in the $15m+ range for a solid month or two, if we recall. What makes the listing different now in 2012? Well, the 1970s three-storey structure now comes...
6 tags
Is That a Pool? Or a Flooded Balcony?
An apartment in Fairlight just emerged on the market that begs the question: is that really a pool? Because it looks like a week of precipitation just occurred on a terrace without a drain. But, then again, it’s a freaking rooftop pool with harbour views in Fairlight, so who are we to complain? The $2m+ apartment spans 416sqm over two floors and a rooftop terrace. The apartment last traded...
7 tags
Front Row Seat in Avalon for a Well-Priced $3.5m+
A three-bedroom, single-story home on an 860sqm allotment on Avalon’s South Head is to auction with $3.5m+ expectations, according to Domain.com.au. The desirable mid-century modern design coupled with a cul-de-sac location within easy walking distance to Avalon’s commercial village (and, of course, the beach) make its $3.5m expectations seem somewhat conservative. Even more...
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Well, That Was Quick: 'Laurel Park' Flipping for...
Just twelve months ago, Laurel Park in Burradoo’s famed (and fatigued) Golden Triangle sold for $3,525,000. The John Sulman-designed home was one of the original Southern Highlands estates to accommodate Sydney’s summering set when it was built in 1886-87. (Believe it or not, Sydney’s 19th century elite wanted to escape the heat of their city’s summer, not bask in it.)...
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Luigi Rosselli-Designed Clifftop on Ben Buckler to...
A recently-built home on the cliff front on Hastings Parade designed by Luigi Rosselli (project architect being Simon Hassall) has listed with $7m+ expectations, according to Domain.com.au. The original intent of the home was far grander with development approval sought for a pool and a three-story home, however, according to the architect’s website, the project was ”scaled down...
8 tags
Princes Hill: The Northern Suburbs' Quiet Achiever
Princes Hill, a tiny residential pocket often grouped together with Carlton North, has consistently achieved $2m+ prices for homes in the past several years. Although there has been significant hubbub surrounding Fitzroy and Fitzroy North’s prestige bump, little has been said about Princes Hill and its parkside homes achieving prices formerly reserved for homes in the southern and eastern...
