One of Australia’s most high-profile real estate figures has pulled off a one-in-a-million sale just minutes after passing in the Melbourne property.
RT Edgar Boroondara director Glen Coutinho said he’d had one of the luckiest results of his 30-year career for a six-bedroom Hawthorne East house that he auctioned over the weekend.
Mr Coutinho said he and his team were packing up after the property was passed in at $4.1 million, only for an amazing series of events to be initiated when a man happened to pull up in his car and enquire about the home.
“We were just about to walk out, everyone had already gone home, and he turned up after seeing the flag and the boards,” Mr Coutinho told REB.
“He had a quick walk through, walked straight back downstairs, signed the contract and left.”
According to Mr Coutinho, the bidding had gone as high as $4.25 million but the vendor had insisted on a minimum of $4.3 million.
“When you’re $50,000 short at that level, you almost feel like putting the money in yourself because you’re so close,” he said.
Even more amazingly, this was the second time in eight months that Mr Coutinho had auctioned the property.
The home was previously sold for $4.02 million in March, but the buyer then returned to China and put the house back on the market.
“When I did the auction last time I said, ‘You’ll never get this opportunity again’, because it’s a pretty unique house, so when we went back to auction I told them, ‘I lied to you last time, because we’re back’.
“We started the campaign four weeks ago thinking the vendor would get his money back if he’s lucky since he paid such a big ticket at the time,” he said.
Mr Coutinho placed sixth in this year’s Top 100 Agents ranking.
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