This tiny footpath home site in Qld is set to go unconditional on Monday.
A $150,000 price drop saw a Brisbane investor beat a flood of others to snap up a tiny footpath where he now plans to build a three bedroom terrace for the sizzling Qld rental market.
The 129sq m footpath in Caloundra West in Brisbane’s north first hit the market priced at offers over $400,000 on December 14, 2021, with real estate agent James Henley of Richardson & Wrench Coolum confirming it had now gone under contract after a price drop.
“It will be sold on Monday if everything goes well, that’s when it goes unconditional,” he said.
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The narrow site can accommodate a three bedroom terrace with some discussion over adding a rooftop terrace as well.
The footpath had its own income stream for the seller, a Sunshine Coast investor who bought the site from Stockland for $150,000 and then leased it back to the developers to use as a footpath.
Mr Henley said the owner had been unwilling to accept any of the early offers made last year for the footpath site while the lease was still being paid.
“Once the lease ended he became more realistic on his pricing. That’s when we changed it to $250,000 and got multiple offers, I’ve lost count, and the highest one was accepted.”
Mr Henley said the Stockland footpath contract “would have been paying for the cost of his repayments during the tenure of the property”.
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Early listing pictures of the footpath site showing the park next door which will now also become terrace sites.
“It was $15,000 a year and that was pretty much paying for everything, so it wasn’t costing him anything. He sold it for much more than what he bought it for so he’s made a nice little profit and did not have to fork out any cash in between so he’s a savvy investor.”
The Brisbane investor taking on ownership signed a deal to buy the property last Monday which had 14-day terms before going unconditional.
“The moment we dropped the price a whole lot of interest came flooding in. We were a little bit quiet before then. I had countless offers around the $200,000 I literally last count, and the highest one was accepted.”
Mr Henley said the site was “nice and central, that’s why the investors were fighting for this one”.
“I don’t think I had any buyers whose intentions were to live there. The majority were from Brisbane but definitely interstate interest. Brisbane seems to be pushing north at the moment quite a lot.”
The cost to build a three bed terrace on the 129sq m block of land was around $400,000.
“I had countless builders proposing their development on there for the client I was meeting. They were all priced around the $400,000 mark to build a medium level terrace home. Because I had investors no one was really going to put a higher level of finish on it. So it was $400,000 (for the build) plus the land cost and the yield for a rental there worked out quite well.”
Mr Henley said the $400,000 build cost was for a three bed terrace with a garage to the edge of the boundary.
“Some of them were talking about a rooftop garden or terrace. You can build right to the edge of the boundary.”
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He said the footpath contract came to an end with the demolition of a park that was next door.
“There are more blocks to come on the other side of the vacant block. The park is no longer there, neither is the footpath. So it’s a vacant piece of land now. Stockland are going to develop more terrace homes throughout that little space.”
“This was always the plan for Stockland when they first developed the area, to create a park in there until it was relatively sold out and then they’d develop it again.”
At $400,000 the tiny suburban footpath would have been over $3,100 per square metre, a price that’s more expensive per square metre than some inner-city luxury development sites in Brisbane.
The latest PropTrack Market Trends report shows the median house price in Caloundra West has jumped 57.2 per cent in the last three years to $750,000.
Come Monday Mr Henley can finally add a footpath sale to his list of achievements.
“I’m looking forward to being able to say I sold a footpath.”
Story Credit: news.com.au