sold $3.31 Million on Middleton Street Petersham
One of the four bidders on 10 Middleton Street, Petersham on Saturday was overseas. On holiday. Bidding down a phone line, hours out of his own time zone, and he stayed in the fight until the number was well past $3.2 million.
That is the detail I keep coming back to. Nobody interrupts a holiday for a three-bedroom house unless they have already decided the house is the one.
It sold for $3.31 million.
How the auction ran
We guided the property in the late 2m’s. The vendor's hope was $3m. The hammer fell $310,000 above that.
Five parties registered and four of them were active. Bidding opened at $2,888,000 and then went sideways in the best possible way. Rises came in $20,000, then $50,000, then $100,000. There was no rhythm to it at all.
When increments jump around like that, it usually means the same thing: two or more buyers have stopped treating price as the deciding factor and started treating the house as the deciding factor. Orderly $10,000 bidding is a market negotiating. Unpredictable bidding is a market competing.
Why this street is different
Middleton Street is not a normal Petersham/inner west street. Most of it is owned by Newington school and used as teacher housing, which means very little of it ever comes to market.
The buyers were a young family with a child already enrolled at Newington. fair to say the walk commute to class will be easy for their jr.
That proximity is worth more than most people outside the area realize. weve seen this behaviour with newington and stanmores growth as a suburb throughout the 90s and 2000s. The pocket of Petersham that sits within an easy walk of Newington behaves like its own micro-market.
The house itself
Three bedrooms, with the federation period detail still intact. fireplace in the bathroom (yes, thats not a typo) The address last traded in 2015 for $1.92 million, so the eleven years between sales added roughly $1.39 million. The vendor is moving on to Strathfield.
The part vendors in Petersham need to hear
A-grade stock like this is still getting serious interest. That is genuinely the case, and Saturday proved it.
The rest of the market is a different story. Certain stock is sitting there waiting and waiting, and I do not think a rate hike would be gentle on it. Properties with real buyer depth can absorb a rate rise, because the competition holds them up. Properties with two interested parties on a good week cannot.
So it is worth being honest with yourself about which one you own.
In Petersham terms, the houses drawing competition tend to be freestanding or wide semis, on quiet streets, with the period detail still there, decent north light, and either off-street parking or a rear lane. Add anything genuinely rare, like a street that hardly ever trades, and you get Saturday.
The ones sitting through four-week campaigns are usually carrying at least two of: main road position, no parking, a single bathroom, or a kitchen and bathroom that need full replacement rather than a tidy-up. Buyers price those defects at replacement cost plus a premium for the inconvenience, and they are in no hurry, because they know another one is coming.
The gap between those two groups has widened this year. It is not a Petersham story or a Marrickville story. It is the same pattern across the whole Inner West.
What it means if you are thinking about selling
The sale here is what happens when buyers who need a property are put in a room together. That art is never changing, but its important to know how to achieve this for your sale.
Knowing which of those two campaigns you are running before you launch is most of the job.
Ramon Raneal is a Property Partner at The Agency, specialising in Petersham, Marrickville, Dulwich Hill, Lewisham, Stanmore, Hurlstone Park and Leichhardt.