The Queens Park enclave is tightly-held, and this particular property has been especially so.

The property has a unique feature and offering, being one of the first houses built on the street in the 1800′s. It was owned by Michael Fitzgerald, after whom the street was named, as his residence.

The property offers a land size of 212 square metres and a street frontage of over 6 metres – over 20 feet – in width. The length of the property from Fitzgerald Street to Stanley Lane is 34 metres. According to data on realestate.com.au sourced from Land Titles, number 11 is one of the largest properties on the street – Fitzgerald Street numbers go up to 63, and number 11 is the 9th largest.

Most importantly, the building itself runs boundary-to-boundary with no lost space on a side path, making that whole 20-foot width available for a large house. This gives the opportunity for side-by-side internal rooms which is a major feature. Many nearby properties cannot benefit from this full-width building opportunity, making for narrower houses, and almost all of them at this northern end of Fitzgerald Street are on smaller land sizes.

Both immediate neighbouring properties have been extensively renovated in the last 8 years. With each of them having secured the precedent with Council for the large rear setbacks and heights which both now enjoy, the passage of a development application for a four or five+ bedroom, three-level home at number 11 Fitzgerald Street should be smooth and straightforward.

This property is the perfect ‘blank canvas’ (excuse the annoying and over-used expression) and offers spectacular creative potential to investors and, especially, to families looking to create the perfect home. The house is a 5 minute walk to the trees and fields of Queens Park and, in the other direction, just a 5 minute walk to the tremendous Westfield shopping centre and Bondi Junction train station, from which it is a mere 8 minute train ride to the middle of the Sydney CBD (data from: http://www.sydneytrains.info/).

The drive from 11 Fitzgerald Street to the middle of the Sydney CBD, 1 Martin Place, is 14 minutes (data from: https://www.google.com/maps).

And yet, when you’re inside the home with family, or entertaining friends in the back garden, it’s so quiet and tranquil that you could be a hundred miles from the nearest large shopping complex and busy roads. 11 Fitzgerald Street is the house in something of a Goldilocks position – not too close, not too far, just right.

As mentioned earlier, the home was built in the 1800s. It was renovated and extended about 100 years later in the 1980s before we bought it, and there it has stayed, with just cosmetic alterations and improvements. It’s comfortable to live in as it is, but to realise its true potential, It’s now ready for the 3rd stage of its life – a major rebuild with demolition and excavation of everything behind the front wall / facade, to 2.5 or 3 stories and multiple bedrooms, bathrooms, living and entertainment areas. It won’t be us who creates this third stage, but its new owners.

We love our house as it’s full of happy memories, and have lived in it for 30 years – we moved in at Easter 1988. But for family reasons, we need to move interstate and pass it on to a new family to make it their own.

*** Please note regarding the photographs. Most real estate photographs are taken with a very wide angle lens, making rooms look artificially large and giving a misleading perspective. So when you actually visit the house, you wonder why the rooms are much smaller than you were expecting.

The photographs on here were intentionally taken with a normal lens to give a much more realistic perspective, much as the human eye would see it.

*** The car under the cover in the garage next to the larger Mazda is a 3-Series BMW – just so you know the size of it.