Record prices for Brighton sales out of the box

Record prices for Brighton sales out of the box
Jonathan ChancellorJune 19, 2011

Much of the allure of owning one of the 85 Brighton bathing boxes is the bragging rights. There’s also the practicalities of having on-beach storage. But that’s getting costlier, as the newest two Dendy Street bathing boxes in the Melbourne bayside suburb sold at the weekend auction for a record $221,000 and $260,000, for the larger of the two.

Set on one of the most photographed locales in Australia, they are the second and third of four new boxes being built and sold by Bayside Council.

The dearer is 11 square metres, and the other nine square metres.

The 85 boxes are a throwback to the 19th century, when the increasing popularity of sea bathing clashed with Victorian-era prudishness.

The first of the newly built weatherboard-clad structures with gabled roof offerings, reported to cost between $15,000 and $20,000 to build, fetched a record $215,000 at auction in December 2010. 

The weekend auction through Hodges Brighton director Sam Paynter exceeded the previous record, even though four other boxes are currently listed for private sale with $185,000 plus hopes.

“Those prices will go up following the auction,” Paynter says.

Six Brighton ratepayers attended the auctions with a view to purchasing.

The boxes hit $200,000 for the first time in 2007, but during the 2008-2009 global financial downturn there was a $171,000 sale.

“They say the market’s not liquid, but there’s sizable growth since the  GFC,” Paynter says.

The first public auction was in 1999, when a box sold for $60,000.

Bayside Council’s original plan was to sell one a year for six years from 2010 to 2015.

Brighton Bathing Box Association president Chris Carlile says the new bathing boxes are welcome – if the revenue they net is used to repair broken drains, ramps and sand build-ups.

Carlile says he does not think the value of other bathing boxes will be affected by the four new boxes.

The council owns the land for each box and charges an annual licence fee of about $600.

Only Bayside ratepayers or residents are allowed to own one.  They are typically 2.4 metres by two metres by two metres.

There are about 1800 bathing boxes and boat sheds around Port Phillip and Western Port Bay, and in the past the Department of Sustainability and Environment and its predecessor, the Port Phillip Authority, have frequently expressed philosophical objection to private structures on the foreshore.

The Brighton Bathing Box association fought moves in the 1980s under the former Cain Labor government to remove the boxes.

Construction of the scheduled remaining box has yet to begin.

Jonathan Chancellor

Jonathan Chancellor is one of Australia's most respected property journalists, having been at the top of the game since the early 1980s. Jonathan co-founded the property industry website Property Observer and has written for national and international publications.

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