Owner occupiers – $1.7m terrace in Surry Hills – ‘three happy generations under the one roof and a 20% capital gain in 20 months’

This began as a retainer to find and buy a $650,000 apartment on the lower north shore for our female client’s mother who had retired to Sydney to care for our clients’ growing family. The apartment had to be close to our clients’ Mosman home which was a semi on a busy road for which they had just received development consent to renovate and extend.

As the retainer unfolded, our clients’ who were a partner of a Big Four accountancy firm and a senior economist, decided in discussions with us, that a better financial and lifestyle choice for them would be to realise a capital gain by selling the semi, pooling resources and buying a home to house three generations of the one family. We advised our client that whilst rare, we would be able to find and buy them such a property in time.

What ensued was a long journey with a happy ending which, with our guidance as its Sydney buyers’ agent, saw a family choose a transition to the inner eastern suburbs to occupy a renovated, five bedroom terrace which we found and bought for them off market. In addition to our usual extensive due diligence, this retainer involved numerous visits – what we call “caravans”– through various suburbs to acquaint our clients with options they had neither previously considered nor explored.

Applying the hindsight test ™*

Virtually unaltered and following our male client’s transfer to London, this property sold at auction 20 months later and in the midst of a stock market collapse for $2.01m representing a 10% year on year capital gain.