A SLICE of Langwarrin land put up for sale failed to attract any bids at auction last Friday after environmentalists made it clear to prospective buyers it would be difficult to build residential homes on the land.
Several environmental groups including the Frankston Environmental Friends Network and the Defenders of the South East Green Wedge attended the midday auction to protest that a sales pitch for the land at 565 McClelland Dve had classed the area as ‘residential’.
Harcourts real estate agent Michael Spring said the protesters had been “very nice and civil” and he had no problem with them making their concerns known at the mortgagee auction.
Mr Spring told The Times the land had been labelled as ‘residential’ on the realestate.com.au website in error and he had asked the online real estate sales site to change the listing weeks before the auction took place.
Last Friday’s auction was cancelled due to a lack of bidders.
“It’s a tough block of land to sell and it’ll now be up to the bank [the mortgagee] to decide what to do next,” Mr Spring said.
FEFN chair David Cross said the group would “keep an eye” on the situation. He believed a buyer had expressed an interest in building “a small school” on the southern end of the land away from the environmentally sensitive Pobblebonk Reserve wetland.
Mr Cross said the group would be happy to “work with” the potential buyer if that was the case.
The land is zoned Rural Conservation Zone within Frankston’s green wedge and had been spruiked by Harcourts Langwarrin as “a blank canvas of 3.395 hectares (approx) of predominately cleared land, with loads of potential, situated on two separate titles.”
Frankston Council also highlighted land use restrictions to mortgagee Westpac Banking Corporation in a letter dated 9 July seen by The Times.
Hasstta Holdings purchased the property for $550,000 in 2006 before entering administration recently.
Hasstta Holdings was convicted at Frankston Magistrates Court in 2009 for removing native vegetation at the site without a permit.
