From £100 to $3.04 million: Post-war Bulimba cottage goes under the hammer
A humble post-war cottage sitting on one of Bulimba’s last big undeveloped blocks has sold under the hammer for $3.04 million – sailing hundreds of thousands past its reserve and setting a new street benchmark as eight bidders battled it out.
Perched on a 1161-square-metre block at 65 Jamieson Street, the pint-sized three-bedroom house last changed hands in the 1950s for just £100.
Seven decades on, it now holds the title as the street’s highest recorded sale.
A huge crowd piled in to watch the Saturday auction unfold, with the eventual buyer lobbing an opening bid of $2 million.
It triggered a fast and furious spring to $2.5 million before three local punters fought to the finish.
“It was the perfect auction,” selling agent Chris Lawson of Harcourts Inner East said.
“This a huge block in a premium location and we always knew, given the lack of availability of sites like this, that there was going to be strong demand.”
Lawson said the winning bidder outmuscled developers, owner-occupiers and investors and planned to move a house from another site to the block. While not Bulimba’s final supersized landholding, he said only a “finite number” remained.
The home was sold as a deceased estate, Lawson said.
It was among 197 scheduled auctions across south-east Queensland. By Saturday evening, Domain recorded a preliminary clearance rate of 49 per cent from 146 reported results, with 28 homes withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold when calculating clearance rates.
In East Brisbane, a long-vacant 1910s estate drew 15 registered bidders and sold for $3.63 million.
The four-bedroom, two-bathroom home at 23 Stanley Terrace, known as Caradon, was built by John C. Hobbs – then-president of the Master Builders Association of Queensland – and sits on a rare 1394-square-metre block.
The deceased estate was the second property owned by the same former opera singer to hit the market in two weeks. It followed last Saturday’s $1.69 million sale of her Carindale home, with proceeds from both homes donated to an animal charity.
An opening bid of $3 million from the underbidder immediately whittled down the field to three.
Selling agent Brandon Wortley, of Ray White Bulimba, said the trio went “hammer and tong” in front of a large crowd until a young buyer planning a renovation secured the keys.
“I’ve already introduced him to an architect … there’s so much activity in that renovation space and that’s because there’s so much confidence around the value of homes,” Wortley said.
“In fact there was a sale not far from this one not recently for $7.25 million and that gives buyers a lot of confidence.”
Wortley said the new custodian was drawn in by the home’s character features.
“The footprint was so big and the home had a beautiful ornate ceiling and stained-glass windows…the inside was not a reflection of the outside of the home at all,” he said.
While he could not disclose the reserve, Wortley said conflicting forces, such as the huge land size versus the inability to remove the house, made pricing hard to benchmark.
“But I always thought it should be somewhere at that ultimate price.”
In Camp Hill, a two-bedroom, one-bathroom cottage with city views sold for $2.01 million after a nine-way tussle.
Marketed by Sarah Hackett of Place Estate Agents New Farm as a prime renovation or rebuild opportunity, the 647-square-metre property at 10 Prout Street attracted a mix of mainly builders and developers.
Auctioneer Sam Kelso said bidding began $1.5 million and moved quickly to $1.8 million in $100,000 and then $50,000 increments.
Momentum then slowed, with two punters hoping to build a luxe new home left to battle it out.
The home was called on the market at $2 million, with a young man nabbing the keys soon after.
“The number one thing with this street is the city views and it’s a seriously impressive part of the suburb,” Kelso said.
“There were a number of different buyer pools and a number of buyers in their 30s who wanted to keep the house and do a reno and then a few investors and builders.
“The sellers had it just on 30 years.”
Domain research and economics chief Dr Nicola Powell said the strong listing numbers and solid clearance rates across Brisbane showed the city was reaching the pointy end of the 2025 selling season.
“This is almost the last hurrah for buyer and sellers and that clearance rate is not too bad,” she said.
“We only have a couple of weekends left and I suspect listing volumes will drop off in the weeks ahead … but I also think the selling season narrative has changed a lot.
“We were expecting another rate cut and that in itself has created a bit of a headwind and it might be dashing sentiment.”
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