How a luxe makeover added $1.5m to Newtown home
The luxury renovation of a character house in central Newtown has been rewarded with a sale price close to $2.5m.
The five-bedroom house at 17 Austin St had been sitting untouched for decades before the owners snapped it up almost five years ago.
The kitchen and wallpaper appeared straight out of the 1950s in the period facade complete with a return veranda and feature turret.
Geelong's $9m 'best home' on track to break record
A contemporary rear extension that added new living spaces, a swimming pool and a top-to-bottom renovation worked with the fall of the block to create a fresh five-bedroom residence.
Whitford, Newtown agent John Moran said the ' beautiful renovation ' was a key attraction during the campaign that ended last week when the buyers posted their best offer.
'It's an amazing house. A beautiful reno, a big family home, the pool and the landscaping,' he said.
The location was also a drawcard, offering proximity to Newtown's main shopping strip on Pakington St, along with local primary and secondary schools being close by.
The renovation added more than $1.5m to the value of the property.
Mr Moran said despite the renovation, the house remains understated from the street.
The five-bedroom, two-bathroom residence is essentially a new home that offers a beautiful blend of old and new, he said.
As a result, it's well hidden from view behind a charming original weatherboard facade that remains largely unchanged.
All the heritage signatures are still there in the bedrooms and front formal lounge (or potential fifth bedroom), from high ceilings and skirts to picture rails and open fireplaces.
Built-in wardrobes have been added, including a his and her set in the spacious main bedroom, along with a modern ensuite, family bathroom and powder room.
A clever courtyard and a high wall of glazing that rises up to meet a raked timber-lined ceiling that mirrors the finish of those found in the original rooms creates a sunny living area, even though it's a south-facing yard.
The large sliding doors topped with extra windows bathe the open-plan hub in natural light and connect it to the pool, lawn, a paved entertainment area and a built-in barbecue.
A designer kitchen, featuring stone benchtop, a butler's pantry with a second sink and family-sized oven, is the centrepiece of the dining and living area.
It adjoins a sunroom, or flexible additional multipurpose room, with its own sliding doors onto the patio and internal access to the property's garage.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News.com.au
33 minutes ago
- News.com.au
Balwyn North auction stuns with $3.36m sale
A Melbourne home has sold for more than $3.3m after a buyer walked through it for the very first time on auction day. A Balwyn North home has taken out the title of Melbourne's biggest auction sale of the weekend, fetching a jaw-dropping $3.361m — and the buyer only saw it hours before making the winning bid. The four-bedroom retro beauty at 5 Alpha St was quoted $2.7m-$2.9m but smashed the top of the guide by $461,000 after an intense five-way bidding war. Jellis Craig Boroondara's Perry Zhou said one of the underbidders was an interstate investor dialling in by phone, but it was a cashed-up local buyer who swept in at the eleventh hour. 'They'd just bought a boat for their adult children and walked through the home for the first time on the day,' Mr Zhou said. 'It all happened so quickly, but it reflects what we're seeing more broadly. Confidence is back.' The 1043sq m block sits on the high side of the street with potential for sweeping city views from a future second-storey extension. The home also falls within the coveted Balwyn High School zone, a major magnet for high-end family buyers. Mr Zhou said the home was declared on the market at $3.15m, and bidding surged a further $211,000 from there. 'That kind of result was well beyond expectations,' he said. 'We had a very realistic guide and strong interest, but no one saw it pushing this far.' He added that Balwyn North was quietly booming again, with buyers circling homes on large blocks — especially those with renovation or development potential. 'If you drive around this pocket, construction is everywhere. Blocks like this are becoming rare, and that's driving the competition,' Mr Zhou said. 'We're seeing buyers move early, before the school holidays and end of financial year. Stock is tightening, so they're jumping in.' While not a record-breaker, Mr Zhou said it was the $3.361m result puts 5 Alpha Street among the top sales in the Greythorn precinct. According to property records, the current benchmark is the $4.888m sale of 98 Greythorn Rd in November 2024, with other notable results including 119 Greythorn Rd, which changed hands for $3.608m earlier last year.
News.com.au
33 minutes ago
- News.com.au
More first-home buyers bite the bullet as market confidence swells
More first-time buyers are taking the plunge on home ownership with loan applications surging 16 per cent at one of Australia's big four banks. Victoria is leading the way in first-home owner activity, recording a 28 per cent jump in lending since February, new NAB data shows. It's followed closely by Western Australia, up 22 per cent, and Queensland, up 21 per cent. Overall, lending to all owner occupiers increased by almost a third nationwide since the Reserve Bank delivered its first rate earlier this year. Surprise source of home deposits exposed Geelong children's librarian Charlotte Dru Ziegeler is one of a growing number of first-home buyers re-entering the market as conditions improve. The 33-year-old recently purchased a house in the seaside Bellarine Peninsula town of St Leonards, near where she grew up. She said had been watching the market and wasn't sure if her deposit would be enough to purchase a home but was encouraged as variable home loan rates started to fall. 'I spoke to a banker, got pre-approved in less than an hour and then, not long after, the right house came up,' Ms Dru Ziegeler said. 'It all happened so fast, it was really exciting, and a huge 'pinch me' moment.' She moved in just six weeks after kickstarting the process, becoming the first of her siblings to buy a house. NAB home lending executive Denton Pugh said cuts to both fixed and variable home loan rates were enticing more first-home and other buyers to re-enter the market. 'We're seeing momentum return, especially with people like Charlotte who've been saving or waiting for the right time to take heat jump into home ownership,' Mr Pugh said. 'And that momentum could carry through winter, which is usually a quieter time with less sellers listing over the cooler months.' He said despite the rate cuts, borrowing costs remained high but this worked in favour of first-home buyers by keeping a lid on property price rises. Buyers' advocate Cate Bakos said first-home buyers were sensing that now might be their chance to get a foot in the door. 'I think it's driven by a few factors. There's a bit of FOMO, sure, but more than that, it's optimism,' Ms Bakos said. 'The federal election is out of the way, interest rates look to be on a downward path, and that's creating a window of confidence.' She said the expansion of the First Home Guarantee scheme had been a game changer for some of her clients, while other were co-buying with their parents or siblings. 'Victoria, in particular, has been a more accessible market for first-home buyers lately,' she said. 'Investor demand here has been softer compared to other states, which has opened up more opportunity.'
News.com.au
36 minutes ago
- News.com.au
Top 10 at 11: ASX opens flat as energy and utilities stocks pull back
Morning, and welcome to Stockhead's Top 10 (at 11… ish), highlighting the movers and shakers on the ASX in early-doors trading. With the market opening at 10am sharp eastern time, the data is taken at 10.15am, once trading kicks off in earnest. In brief, this is what the market has been up to this morning. ASX wobbles out the gate The ASX has had an unsettled start to the day, yo-yoing a few points either side of neutral in the first half hour or so of trade. As of about 10.30am AEST, the ASX 200 is down 0.01% and the All Ords has gained 0.02%. Oil prices slid overnight as tensions between Israel and Iran continued to simmer without flaring too much higher, losing 1.3% to US$73.23 a barrel of Brent crude. Santos (ASX:STO) hovered slightly below its Monday close as investors get jittery Treasurer Jim Chalmers will nix a $8.89 a share cash deal that will give control of key Aussie LNG assets to a consortium led by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company on national interest grounds. They're sitting at $7.69 a pop. That took the wind out of energy (-0.24%) and utilities (-0.35%) sector sails, which had been on a tear the last couple of days, effectively propping up the market against a tide of red yesterday. The ASX All Ords gold sub-index is instead providing some stability today, up 0.78% alongside a 0.46% gain in the materials sector itself. Tech stocks are also on the up, with the sector adding 0.36% and the index a more modest 0.24%. WINNERS Code Name Last % Change Volume Market Cap PVT Pivotal Metals Ltd 0.012 100% 18841513 $5,443,355 AXP AXP Energy Ltd 0.0015 50% 142500 $6,684,681 VR8 Vanadium Resources 0.019 36% 1278085 $7,900,086 ADD Adavale Resource Ltd 0.002 33% 354721 $3,430,919 LSR Lodestar Minerals 0.008 33% 500000 $1,910,543 AUK Aumake Limited 0.0025 25% 200948 $6,046,718 EDE Eden Inv Ltd 0.0025 25% 426584 $8,219,762 MEL Metgasco Ltd 0.0025 25% 330000 $3,413,768 MX1 Micro-X Limited 0.053 23% 551443 $28,689,697 FCT Firstwave Cloud Tech 0.018 20% 25000 $25,702,780 In the news... Vanadium Resources (ASX:VR8) is eyeing a transition to near-term production for its Steelpoortdrift vanadium project, after inking an MoU with China Precious Asia for the supply of magnetite ore. While non-binding at this stage, VR8 has agreed to provide 100,000 tonnes of vanadium-rich direct shipping magnetite ore per month, subsequently unlocking early-stage revenue to support staged development of Steelpoortdrift. Metgasco (ASX:MEL) released its monthly gas production results for its assets in the Odin and Vali gas fields, notching an 8% increase on the previous month to produce 100 MMscf of raw gas. Cold cathode x-ray technology company Micro-X (ASX:MX1) has passed a second and third milestone under its development agreements with ARPA-H and Billion Prima, netting a total of $2.3m in return. The company is developing a Full Body CT scanner for ARPA-H and a baggage and parcel scanning unit for Billion Prima. LAGGARDS Code Name Last % Change Volume Market Cap SFG Seafarms Group Ltd 0.001 -33% 660744 $7,254,899 JAV Javelin Minerals Ltd 0.002 -20% 59000 $15,315,373 OVT Ovanti Limited 0.002 -20% 15408 $7,513,788 TFL Tasfoods Ltd 0.004 -20% 7937 $2,185,478 MQR Marquee Resource Ltd 0.009 -18% 577453 $6,141,328 ADG Adelong Gold Limited 0.005 -17% 5427273 $12,412,060 TMK TMK Energy Limited 0.0025 -17% 1229038 $30,667,149 SPQ Superior Resources 0.003 -14% 262597 $8,298,440 MKL Mighty Kingdom Ltd 0.013 -13% 239000 $7,292,125 KRR King River Resources 0.008 -11% 201516 $13,753,987
