Sometimes I go back through my too-long list of Queenslanders that are either for sale, or have been sold in the recent past.
And, sometimes I see things that make my Queenslander-heart break. The price of ‘progress’.
Things like this. The image on the left is 2019. The image on the right is 2022.
Here’s a quick history.
A three bedroom, one bathroom home on a 865sqm block, backing onto Kedron Brook. Needs work. Beautiful bones.
Listed for sale in May 2019 for offers over $895,000.
Sold in May 2019 for $920,000.
Today, September 2022.
The original, beautiful home, gone.
In its place, four townhouses.
Here’s the rub.
Housing in Brisbane (and across Australia) is at breaking point. Record high prices have pushed the dream of owning a home out of the hands of many. Rising rents and scarcity of rental homes threatens many families with homelessness.
So, taking one house on a large block and splitting it into four townhouses makes social and economic (for the developer, we’ll cover that later) sense.
But to see, across Australia, more and more of our history being replaced with soulless architecture makes me feel sad.
The Finances
If you have the capital to do it, a developer in these times is the golden ticket, the goose that lays the golden egg.
In August 2022, one of these townhouses sold for $1,300,000. Multiply that by four and you get $5,200,000.
Now this doesn’t take into account the Council fees to sub-divide the land, the architecture fees, marketing fees (they have a fancy website) and the construction cost. But I’m very confident that this was a very profitable exercise.
The Details
This house was located at 21 Little Barron Street, Gordon Park. It was sold for $920,000 on 27 May 2019 by Craig Lea of McGrath Real Estate.
