A driveway in an inner Sydney suburb has sold to a developer for $1.25 million at auction – $250,000 more than its advertised price guide.
The 4 metre-wide block of land in Newtown is just 110 square metres, at present includes a shed and a carport, and the sale listing described it as a “read-to-build block” and a “golden opportunity for developers in a blue-chip setting”, with low-density residential zoning.
The auction on Saturday attracted three active bidders, and Adrian William Real Estate agent Chris Akkawi told Domain all had planned to build on the site.
“They are going to develop it, whether or not they are going to on sell or keep it, I couldn’t say,” he said of the successful buyer.
“It is block of land in Newtown which is very rare.”
The sale comes after Sydney’s median house price hit $1.76 million in December, with analysts saying it was likely to exceed the $2 million mark in 2027 or 2028, fuelled by record-high levels of immigration.
Griffith University urban planning lecturer Tony Matthews told The Nightly last month immigration needed to be drastically cut in order to reduce demand for housing and slow price growth.
“We cannot improve affordability unless we radically reduce demand, and that means having a hard look at the population of the country and how fast it’s swelling year to year and where that growth is coming from,” he said.
“Most of that is not coming from internal reproduction, it’s coming from migration: tricky political questions are outside the discussion at the moment.
“The demand is so high that we can’t deliver the supply to meet the demand without building entirely new cities.”
More than 568,000 immigrants arrived in Australia during the last financial year, according to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data, putting net overseas migration at 306,000, the third highest intake on record.
Australia’s dwelling price-to-income ratio also hit a record high of 9.2 in the September quarter, according to Cotality, with Sydney’s at 10, Adelaide’s at 9.2, Brisbane’s at 8.8, Perth’s at 7.7 and Melbourne’s at 7.1.
Capital city rents have increased by 43% since 2020, but the latest housing construction data from the ABS shows residential completions fell by 1.5%, with the Labor government now 81,000 homes behind its Housing Accord target of 300,000 since July 2024.
Header image: The driveway from above (Adrian William – Domain).
