The sale of a Glebe terraced house with a fascinating connection to the silver screen was one of the highlights of a busy weekend of auctions in Sydney.
The stately four-bedroom home on Glebe Point Rd, which attracted a winning bid of $4.815 million, has a place in Australian film history.
Sellers Justin and Belinda Hoare bought the property in 2003, when the house was the headquarters of the Sydney Film Festival.
It was the festival’s headquarters for 30 years between 1974 and 2004, before its headquarters were moved to Elizabeth St in the CBD.
405 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe, is the former headquarters of the Sydney Film Festival.
The festival screened hundreds of films from far and wide on the Glebe Point Rd site.
The Sydney Film Festival screened a number of notable films between 1974 and 2004, from comedies like the Aussie classic Muriel’s wedding in 1994 to Richard Kelly’s psychological thriller Donnie Darko in 2002.
In 2003 – the year the Hoares bought the property – the festival screened George Clooney’s directorial debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
“All films shown at the festival would be projected there first,” Hoare said.
“We converted their projection room into a bathroom and our master bedroom had an alcove that I heard was the director’s office.”
Between 2003 and 2005 the couple gradually completed renovations to the property, converting a film festival studio into a family home which Mr Hoare said held ‘many, many happy memories’.
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Promoting actors George Clooney and Sam Rockwell Confessions of a Dangerous Mind in 2003. The film was screened at the 2003 Sydney Film Festival.
Guided into the low $4 million range, bidding on the property opened at $3.8 million.
Five bidders competed in an auction befitting the house’s dramatic past, with bids coming in long after the house had approved its guide.
A crowd of forty people witnessed the fall of the hammer, after a winning bid of just an additional $5,000 was enough to complete the proceedings.
The auction was conducted by Tim Snell, CEO of Ray White NSW, who said interest in this type of property was always going to be high.
“This auction was always going to be hotly contested because an offer like this is quite rare,” he said.
“To have a large plot of land with parking and such a wide frontage in the heart of Glebe is really rare and becoming increasingly rare.”
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Inside, the house has retained its original aesthetic.
The home’s price is $2.437 million above the Glebe median for homes.
Selling agent Matt Carvalho of Ray White Glebe said the house had “great bones”, with buyers seeing its potential.
“It really is a grand house with the potential to add even more value,” he said.
The buyer of the house was a woman who bought the property for herself.
However, she was not present at the auction, with Mr Carvalho saying her father was actually bidding on her behalf.
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PJ Hogan’s Muriel’s wedding shown at the Sydney Film Festival in 1994.
At this point, Mr Carvalho said the market in the area was “very property specific”.
“Some houses may only have one or two bidders,” he said.
“But anyway, A-class will always have a lot of interest in them.”
Now that the property has been sold, Mr Hoare said he and Belinda were looking forward to balancing life between their properties in the Central Coast and the Central West.
“We are moving to this kind of lifestyle in the coastal country,” he said.
The Hoare family celebrate the sale with selling agent Matt Carvalho.
According to PropTrack, there were 1,147 auctions scheduled in Sydney this week, up 1 percent year-on-year.
It was love at first sight at an auction in Alexandria, where a buyer purchased a revived Victorian terrace on Brandling St after first seeing the property on auction day.
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This house on Brandling Street, Alexandria, was purchased by a buyer who saw it for the first time on auction day.
Selling agent Brad Gillespie of The Agency said he had never seen or met the buyer before and it is understood he bought the four-bedroom property for his son.
The house was sold at auction for $3.8 million.
Quite an impulse purchase.
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This Castle Hill home sold at auction for $2.703 million.
In the Hills District, a spacious six-bedroom in Castle Hill attracted a lot of interest and fetched a pretty penny at auction.
Five active bidders competed for the home, which ultimately sold for $2.703 million, a price $278,000 above the suburb’s median home price.
The winning bidders were a young family from the area who wanted to expand into a larger family home.
Ray White Castle Hill sales agent Benjamin Chen said the buyers were attracted to the home’s school area and already had major renovation plans.
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