A young Melbourne couple have been roasted online after “impulse buying” a $1.5 million East Brunswick terrace at auction.
But the agent who sold the property has now spoken out, saying the backlash from “keyboard warriors” is unfair and that the sale has been misrepresented.
Property website Domain published an article on Saturday about the young buyers of 110 Barkly Street, which sold under the hammer after the couple pipped another bidder for just $500.
Darcy and Tessa, who declined to give their last names, ultimately paid $1,500,500 for the deceased estate, which went to auction with a price guide of $1.3 million to $1.43 million.
“To be honest we weren’t really looking, we were just looking casually and this one popped up,” Tessa told Domain.
Darcy added, “There’s a bit of concern around with what housing prices are doing but this one really stood out to us, and it turned out we got it.”
The couple said they planned to fix up the terrace and rent it out in the short term before moving in later and doing further renovation.
Darcy said while interest rate rises were “certainly something to consider”, the couple were “in a good position with renting it out at this point”.
“From our point of view we can pass that on to the rental market,” he said.
The article went viral on Reddit after a user on the Melbourne forum posted a screenshot of the headline.
“I guess I don’t feel so bad about impulse buying a Snickers at the Coles checkout now,” they wrote.
“I mean we’ve all been there, right? Just wandering down the street to get coffee or something, you’ve got $1.5 million burning a hole in your pocket and you stumble across an auction – damn it! Did I really just buy a house again? Man my wife is going to give me a hard time about this when I get back.”
One person replied, “I genuinely know two people who have done this. One whilst driving past on the way to visit a friend (investment property in Footscray), and the other whose husband came home and announced he’d bought a new family home. WTF.”
Another wrote, “Joke’s on them, be at least $500,000 less in about six months.”
Ray White Glenroy auctioneer Stefan Stella told news.com.au on Monday he felt the reaction from “keyboard warriors” online had been “pretty harsh”.
“As much as it said they weren’t really looking, they did see it on the first open, came multiple times – they were there three times,” he said.
“In my opinion they were probably always going to get it. The underbidder only saw it in the last week. I think what they may have meant was they weren’t actively looking and religiously out there every Saturday, that’s potentially the message they were trying to get across.”
It comes after the Reserve Bank hiked interest rates for the fourth month in a row last week.
The 50 basis-point increase at the central bank’s August meeting brings the official cash rate to 1.85 per cent, up from the record low 0.1 per cent it was up until May.
Already, the rise in interest rates has pushed house prices down in most major cities as borrowers stare down the barrel of higher monthly payments.
PropTrack’s Home Price Index shows a national decline of 1.66 per cent in prices since March, but some regions have seen much sharper falls.
“As repayments become more expensive with rising interest rates, housing affordability will decline, prices pushing further down,” PropTrack senior economist Eleanor Creagh said.
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