28 Empress Road SURREY HILLS

Comments on 28 Empress Road SURREY HILLS

What is there not to like about 28 Empress Road Surrey Hills?
 
Position: In Surrey Hills top precinct and is a Top 10 Street – all Heritage protected – meaning no blocks of flats next door anytime soon. The land is wide, deep and flat with a north rear – is there a better set of characteristics? – not in my reckoning, if light and a feeling a space, all on one level, located close to all amenties is important to you.
 
Property: The actual house itself I could find fault with if I was being really picky – its sitting back a tad too far, making the rear yard ok without being as good as it could on this block size and reproduction homes tend to not go as well as the actual period homes. However, this is better than the usual repro because they didn’t make any of the mistakes except a cosmetic one in the bathrooms. They got the ceiling heights and room sizes right – they went for timber (not brick) and they made the garage a real one – not a pretend one eg. a tandem carport. The side entrance is never as good as a grand front entrance, but it does remove that lack of privacy one can feel for a corridor master bedroom.
 
The laundry which is big enough for a football team is in the right spot for the garage but not the kitchen – but it’s not a hanging offence – no points lost – just not perfection of connection.  Extra rooms such as office and dining are now post covid favourites. Upstairs the ceiling heights are good - which is rare on the repros - so this doesn’t in fact feel like a repro - it feels like a renovated period home.
 
Backyard – for me it works – as does the whole home.
 
Price: last year when I first saw it – I thought high $2m’s and this time around I thought low $3m’s maybe mid in a cyclone of bidding – but the agent has been aggressive in pushing the quote up and so maybe they have greater insight than us – with that quote it feels maybe mid $3m is where it starts to get interesting and therefore does $4m come into it? Not a lot of $4m history in this area – one or two – I think Wandsworth at high $3m’s is the beacon more so than low to mid 4’s on Guildford – both recent hot sales.
 
I really do like this home and this market at $3m and above, all done, is crying out for this type of stock – well, it was prior and during lockdown – so it should go stronger, rather weaker than any expectations you may have.