Old front, new back

DISCLOSURE

This property is listed by WHITEFOX Real Estate, not by the publisher of this paper.

Between the Creeks is published by Collings, which has no interest in this sale and receives nothing for this page. We write about properties on their merits, whoever is selling them.

A Statement of Information for this property, including the indicative selling price, three comparable sales and the suburb median, is available from the listing agent.

From the footpath, almost nothing about this house is new. The hipped corrugated roof, the weatherboard face and the proportions of the windows all read as the Preston that was built here between the wars.

Step back and the second roof gives it away. Behind the original cottage stands a tall gable, clad in vertical sheeting, holding whatever a 1930s floorplan could not.

That is the move, and it is the most common renovation in this part of Darebin: keep the front rooms and the street face, and put the rest of the house in a new building behind.

The detailing at the front is worth looking at. The picket fence sits on a rendered plinth rather than straight into the ground. The verandah is screened with a run of narrow vertical battens, a modern gesture, but in the same rhythm as the pickets below it, so the two read as one idea rather than two.

The planting is drought-tolerant and low: grasses, a young tree each side, gravel underfoot instead of lawn. A garden that expects to be ignored for a fortnight in February and survive it.

Inside, the agent's description leans on the joinery, with cornices, rosettes, architraves and exposed brick offered as the link back to the original house, alongside a guest room with a walk-in robe. The listed features run to a study, an ensuite, ducted heating and cooling, floorboards and a built-in barbecue.

Four bedrooms, three bathrooms, two car spaces. Domain records the property as last sold in 2025.

The number that stands out is the guide. Preston's median for a four-bedroom house is $1.353 million, across 103 sales in the past twelve months. A guide of $2.1 to $2.3 million sits somewhere between 55 and 70 per cent above that.

That is not a criticism. Medians flatten everything, and a renovated four-bedroom house with three bathrooms is not the median Preston four-bedroom house. But it is the gap a buyer has to be persuaded of on the day, and four-bedroom houses are the slowest-moving stock in this suburb: a median 62 days on market and a 60 per cent clearance rate, against 41 days and 67 per cent for three-bedroom houses.

Which makes 7 November worth watching whether or not you are in the market.

WHY THIS PAGE EXISTS

One property a month, written the way we would write about anything else: what it is, what it is asking, and how that sits against the suburb it is in.

Not always our listing. Not always expensive. Not always a renovation.

If you think a house on your street deserves the page, tell us.

betweenthecreeks@collings.com.au

RESULT IN DECEMBER

This paper lands on 5 November. The auction is on the 7th.

We will print what it sold for, or what it passed in at, in edition 2. Between The Creeks.