With "Riverbend" listed for sale, I do keep an eye on the property market. With few inquiries - and then only pretty weird ones; one from a hippie lady and her dog travelling around Australia in a beat-up VW Kombi - I hold out little hope but, as they say, it only takes one buyer, doesn't it?
Every so often, some comparable property comes up for sale which makes you wonder why "Riverbend" at its seemingly modest asking price of around three million dollars hasn't sold yet. 158 Headland Drive, Gerroa, NSW 2534 is one of them: a nice but not spectacular house on a mere 556 square metres of admittedly breathtakingly beautiful land by the ocean.
Breathtakingly beautiful, yes, but also at a breathtakingly high price: $6,950,000! It makes "Riverbend" with its seven acres along the Clyde River look like a bargain, plus you get town water and sewerage (which is said to be connected by Christmas) and you're a ten-minute drive away from bustling Batemans Bay, and an-hour-and-a-bit from Canberra - and you won't have to wipe the saltspray off the windows every five minutes.
"Offered to the market for the first time in 25 years, this is one of the most coveted and tightly held positions in Gerroa", the advertisement says but zango.com.au seems to suggest that it last sold in October 2021 for $5,200,000 which must've been one corker of a year because several other properties in the same street also sold for over five million, with 138 Headland Drive selling for a dizzying $7,100,000 after having been bought just ten years earlier for $1,100,000. Speaking of a mad property market!
Of course, what drives real estate prices are the land valuations on which council rates are based. 158 Headland Drive has a land valuation of $3,740,000 which gives it a "low" land value rating and "probably not a great investment in terms of land value", according to landvalue.au.
Contrast this with "Riverbend" whose land alone was valued by the Valuer-General two years ago at $2,637,000 which means that at an asking price of around $3,000,000, the lucky buyer would get the two-storey house, the guest cottage, the workshop, the garage (converted to a library) and a score of other improvements for just $363,000. What an absolute bargain! It's about time landvalue.au knew about it, and so I sent them this email:
Perhaps I should've added, "Please form an orderly queue!"
