A young family has sold their inner-city townhouse for almost $1 million more than they paid for it five years ago.
The modern two-bedroom property, tucked away in a laneway in the heart of Prahran, sold under the hammer for $1,795,000 on Saturday.
Title records show the property last traded in 2012 for $810,000.
The vendors, a couple with a young child looking to upsize, had extensively renovated the townhouse at 1/16 Hurry Place in the lead up to the auction.
Its quality finishings and modern design won over the buyers, a downsizing couple who have been living and working in Shanghai for several years.
Sue Heine and her husband plan to leave the bustling Chinese city of 26 million people and move back to Melbourne in two years.
In the meantime, their two adult children will live in the Prahran townhouse.
"The decor and design of it is what drew us to this particular place," she said after the auction.
It was one of 858 properties across Melbourne scheduled to go to auction on Saturday. By evening, Domain Group had recorded a 78 per cent clearance rate from 617 reported auctions.
In front of a crowd of about 30 people, Ms Heine outbid two other parties to secure the keys as bidding climbed almost $200,000 above reserve.
"I was just really determined," Ms Heine said. "I kept coming back and back and back as quick as I could to put them off a bit, which seemed to work."
Auctioneer Tom McCarthy of Biggin & Scott Prahran described it as a "staggering result".
"There's not many homes available for sale in Prahran," he said. "There's lots of apartments but there's probably only two dozen houses for sale."
Meanwhile in St Kilda East, another family had good reason to celebrate after their four-bedroom, three-bathroom home sold for $1.2 million more than what they bought it for five years ago.
Last traded in 2012 for $1.46 million, the residence sold under the hammer for $2.7 million on Saturday morning.
The vendors, a couple who run a Scandinavian-inspired kids' fashion store, had recently done work on the property, said listing agent Fiona Ansell-Jones from Marshall White Stonnington.
Bidding for 31 Landsdowne Road started at $2.2 million and it was declared on the market at $2.5 million.
Ms Ansell-Jones said it was a rare for a large family home to go on the market in the area.
"It's such a little pocket that's tightly held and relatively undiscovered," she said. "Not a lot comes up here."
