OWNER HAS A LOT TO LIKE

A NEWTOWN landowner stands to make a tidy profit from the upcoming sale of a rare vacant block adjoining Moorak Park.

The 485sq m parcel of land at Lot 2, 1 Cairns Ave, Newtown has been listed with price hopes of $790,000 to $850,000.

Newtown agent Graeme Taylor said the blue chip block, once home to the Newtown city council nursery, was a prime home site. He said it had recently been carved off from a larger parcel of more than 1000sq m which was sold for the first time during council amalgamations in the 1990s.

The buyer paid $158,000 for that property in 1992, according to CoreLogic records.

Mr Taylor said the elevated block was tucked away in a culde-sac and offered views over the surrounding area and easy access to Newtown’s schools.

“The owner who has subdivided has got a two-storey house he built next door and he loves it because it’s like a little secluded hideaway,” he said. “It’s quiet and peaceful.”

Mr Taylor said that, unusually for that part of Newtown, the site had no heritage overlay, which allowed flexibility in designing a dream home.

He said the land was once part of a larger estate at 111 Noble St, Newtown, a circa 1905 house that sold for $3.3 million last April.

He said past owners of the Noble St property, the VickersWillis family, originally gifted the land to the former Newtown council.

The land is less than a block from the Geelong College senior school and is also within walking distance of several primary schools and the river end of Pakington St.

It will be auctioned on February 22 at 1.30pm.