A three-bedroom home on Eton Avenue, Magill sold for $1,650,000 at auction in March 2026, the level four-bedroom homes reach. The reason was build quality. It was double brick, engineer-built in 2010, on more than 700 square metres, and the right family valued that over an extra bedroom.
Years before we sold 18 Eton Avenue, Magill, I sat at the kitchen table with the man who built it. Henry was an engineer, a fitter and turner. I had recently sold a home a few doors away, and he invited me in for a cup of tea. We talked about his trade, his business, and the home he had built for his family. It was not a sales meeting. It was a conversation between two locals.
What struck me was the pride he took in the house. Everything had been built for a reason. The double-brick walls, the solid internal doors, the oversized rooms, the powered workshop at the rear. Nothing was a compromise and nothing was done to save money. The home was not built to impress future buyers. It was built to last. I left thinking homes like this were becoming rare. Years later, when the family decided to sell, that conversation proved invaluable.
The challenge was never the home. It was the market. At around $1.6 million, most buyers searching in Magill start with a simple brief. They want four bedrooms. This home offered three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a triple garage on more than 700 square metres. The rooms were generous and the construction was exceptional, but on paper it sat outside what many buyers thought they wanted.
As the campaign went on, the buyers who connected most with the property stopped talking about bedrooms. They talked about quality. Built in 2010, the home has a sense of permanence that is hard to explain until you walk through it. Buyers noticed the solid feel of the double brick, the custom oak kitchen, the proportions and the detail. The powered workshop became a talking point of its own, especially once they heard about the man who built it.
The location helped. This part of Magill keeps drawing families for its schools, its sport and the short walk to Daly Oval, and buyers could picture their children growing up here. It has stayed popular with owner-occupiers for decades, and that holds value.
By auction day, six buyers had registered, which confirmed what we had seen all campaign. Bidding stopped at $1,550,000. People assume the auction is where a sale is made. Often it just reveals who wants the home most, and the negotiation that follows matters as much. The family had been clear from the start. They wanted $1,650,000 and not a dollar less, and after weeks of speaking with buyers we understood why. The conversations after the auction came back to the same things buyers had returned to all along: the construction, the land, the depth of the block, the workshop and the gardens. We secured the sale at $1,650,000.
It is not what I think a property is worth. It is what the market will pay.
Looking back, this result was not really about a three-bedroom home. It was about value. Our job as agents is to help buyers understand what makes a home special, and help sellers understand how the market is responding. In this case, the market decided quality mattered more than an extra bedroom. Henry built a home meant to last for generations, the family who bought it saw that, and that is why this Magill home achieved the result it did.