Avoid becoming a real estate casualty in St Kilda VIC 3182

Research has shown that 90% of home sellers and buyers have had a bad experience in dealing with real estate agents. Avoid becoming a casualty with your St Kilda VIC real estate agent… their fees, costs and commission were only the tip of the iceberg!

Real Estate Agents in St Kilda VIC 3182

If you are after a list of St Kilda real estate agents, the best agent, the top agent, you won’t find your answer instantly on any website, well you will but you won't! The information made available in an instant on a comparison website or, on a rating website, is not complete, is not the whole picture. The information you are given on these websites is limited to only the real estate salespeople in St Kilda that have joined their service.

If you are looking to sell, connect with an agent who will put more money in your pocket. Find out who they are from an independent source. A source that does not allow agents to subscribe to it, a source that does not have predetermined lists or affiliations with anyone. You can then rest assured that the information is truely independent. iREC- Vendor Advocate Service St Kilda VIC

Who Has The Keys To Your St Kilda VIC Home

How many people do you meet and after a brief chat of maybe 30 minutes or so you give them the keys to your home so they can come in whenever they like… whether you are home or not?

Do the people you trust the most in your life have the keys to your home... your Doctor, your Solicitor your Accountant?

Most people sell their home maybe once or twice in their lifetime. Most people take the decision of choosing their real estate agent far too lightly. Getting your real estate agent in St Kilda VIC right the first time will be one of the single biggest financial decisions you will make, ever.

So, who has the keys to your home? Before you invite a stranger, a real estate agent, into your financial life, understand if they will improve it or destroy it.

Planning to sell your real estate in St Kilda VIC?

There are 2 types of skilled real estate agents, you need to avoid one of them at all costs! read more >

Real Estate Commission and Fees in St Kilda VIC

A Word To The Wise... it's not what the real estate agent charges you at the start that is important, it's what they cost you if you use the wrong one! We all want to maximise the result in our pocket but if you pick the agent purely because they have a lower fee than the others you're starting on the wrong foot from day 1.

We have compared the major Agent Comparison sites and have all the numbers... read more >

Did you know that even after you agree to a selling fee, it is still negotiable... read more >

Is Your Current St Kilda Real Estate Agent Giving You Grief

If you are currently on the market in St Kilda and things are not quite going to plan, feel free to contact us for a complimentary chat and we will get you back on the right path. iREC- Vendor Advocate Service St Kilda VIC

Got a Question?

If you have any questions relating to St Kilda real estate agents, their fees, commission, cost or just generally about selling your property in St Kilda feel free to drop me a line, contact me personally (Robert Williams) on 1300 886359 or email me direct at robert@irec.com.au

Who is iREC

Find out more about who we are and what we do >

About the suburb St Kilda

St Kilda was named after a schooner, Lady of St Kilda (which moored at the main beach for much of 1841) by Charles La Trobe, and the ship's master and early settler Lieutenant James Ross Lawrence. During the Victorian and Edwardian eras, St Kilda became a favoured suburb of Melbourne's elite, and many palatial mansions were constructed along its hills and waterfront. Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, St Kilda served a similar function for Melburnians as did Coney Island to the residents of New York City and its history draws an interesting parallel. Densely populated postwar St Kilda became Melbourne's red-light district, home to low-cost rooming houses. Since the late 1960s, St Kilda has become known for its culture of bohemianism and as home to many prominent artists, musicians and subcultures, including punk and LGBT. While some of these groups still maintain a presence in St Kilda, in recent years the district has experienced rapid gentrification pushing many lower socio-economic groups out to other areas. St Kilda is home to many of Melbourne's famous visitor attractions including Luna Park, the Esplanade Hotel, Acland Street and Fitzroy Street. It is home to St Kilda Beach, Melbourne's most famous beach, several renowned theatres and several of Melbourne's big events and festivals.

Kulin people lived in Euroe Yroke (the area now known as St Kilda) for an estimated 31,000 to 40,000 years. Evidence has been found of shellfish middens and huts along Albert Park and Lake and axes which were most likely sharpened on the sandstone cliffs behind the main beach. Corroborees were held at the historic tree which still stands at St Kilda Junction, at the corner of Fitzroy Street and Queens Road. Much of the area north of present-day Fitzroy Street was swampland, part of the Yarra River Delta which comprised vast areas of wetlands and sparse vegetation. The first European settler in St Kilda was Benjamin Baxter in around 1839. He was a settler from Melbourne on a grazing lease. In 1840, St Kilda was the home to Melbourne's first quarantine station for Scottish immigrants. The area was officially named St Kilda in 1841. The first sale of Crown lands in St Kilda took place on 7 December 1842. The first block was bought by James Ross Lawrence, who had been master of the Lady of St Kilda until 1842. Lawrence had now settled in Melbourne. His block was bounded by three unmade roads. One of these roads he named Acland Street after Thomas Acland, who had been his employer until 1840 but who had never been to Port Phillip District. The remaining two became Fitzroy Street and The Esplanade. (A plaque at the junction of Acland and Fitzroy Streets marks the site of the block.) By 1845, Lawrence had subdivided and sold the land on which he had built a cottage. The land on the sea-side of The Esplanade has continued to be Crown land. Within a few years, St Kilda became a fashionable area for wealthy settlers and the indigenous peoples were driven out to surrounding areas. The high ground above the beach offered a cool fresh breeze during Melbourne's hot summer months. St Kilda became a separate municipality on 24 April 1857, and in the same year, the railway line and railway station connected St Kilda to Melbourne city and a loop line to Windsor. These railway lines brought many visitors to St Kilda and increased patronage to the privately run sea baths, the jetty promenade and the St Kilda Cup, cricket and bowling clubs were formed in 1855 and 1865. By the mid-1860s St Kilda had about fifteen hotels including the George, formerly the Seaview (1857). Land boom St Kilda's population more than doubled between 1870 and 1890 to about 19,000 persons. During the Land Boom of the 1880s, St Kilda became a densely populated district of great stone mansions and palatial hotels, particularly along the seaside streets such as Fitzroy Street, Grey Street and Acland Street the area once known as St Kilda Hill centred between Wellington Street, Alma Road, former High Street (incorporated as part of St Kilda Road) and Chapel Street. The Esplanade Hotel was built in 1878 overlooking St Kilda Beach and the George Hotel was built in 1889 at the railway terminus on Fitzroy Street, on the site of the Seaview hotel (1857). The lower inland areas of St Kilda East were not so wealthy and included many smaller, semi detached cottages, many constructed of timber. Much of the area which is now St Kilda West was swampland, but was reclaimed and subdivided in the 1870s. Cable tram lines were opened in 1888 and 1891 to run from the Melbourne central city area along St Kilda Road to St Kilda Junction and then branch out along Wellington, High and Fitzroy Streets. Seaside playground During the Depression of the 1890s, however, St Kilda began to decline. Many wealthy families had lost much of their fortunes and several of the large mansions were subdivided for apartment or boarding-house accommodation. After a cable tram line was extended south from the Melbourne central city area, the seaside area became a popular entertainment precinct for Melbourne's working classes. Wealthy people moved to more exclusive suburbs such as Brighton, South Yarra and Toorak. From 1906, the Victorian Railways operated their 'Electric Street Railway' from St Kilda to Brighton. Carlo Catani, a native of Italy, was Chief Engineer of the Public Works Department. He was contracted in 1906 to prepare a masterplan for the beautification of the St Kilda foreshore to Point Ormond. His plan resulted in the famous leisure precinct along the foreshore. Notable features included the Dreamland amusement park, which existed between 1906 and 1909, the St Kilda Sea Baths (1910), which replaced the 1862 "Gymnasium Baths", Luna Park (1912), Palais de Danse (1926), the Palais Theatre (1927), St Moritz Ice Rink (1939), and many others. Several landmarks along the foreshore have been named after Catani, including the clock tower, gardens and arch. St Kilda grew as a centre for Melbourne's growing Jewish community and a growing Orthodox community developed with a number of synagogues and schools. Cafe Scheherazade on Acland Street was for many years an icon to this community, however as the community moved eastwards to more affluent Caulfield, it became of more historical interest, before finally shutting its doors and moving to Caulfield in 2008. There are still Jewish neighbourhoods in East St Kilda, mainly of older and more Orthodox people but the Jewish character of Acland Street is no longer the dominant presence it had been once. Further decline St Kilda's decline escalated after the Great Depression and it became the growing focus of many of Melbourne's social issues including crime, prostitution and drug abuse. Several cabaret venues emerged. Leo's Spaghetti bar and gelateria was opened for the Olympics in 1956 by an Italian migrant as one of Melbourne's first Italian restaurants and quickly became a Melbourne establishment. St Kilda became one of the city's main areas of bohemianism as well as one of the larger gay and lesbian residential areas From 1965, Mirka Mora's Tolarno Hotel became the focus of many of the local artists. In the early 1960s works to the Lower Esplanade turned it into a fast moving connection between Marine Parade and Beaconsfield Parade, creating a barrier to the beach, except for a pedestrian crossover and several traffic lights. In 1968, the Palais de Danse, adjacent to the Palais was gutted by fire. The Palace nightclub was built in its place in 1971 (in 2007 this building was closed, gutted by fire and demolished). In the late 1960s St Kilda Junction was rebuilt to create a Queens Way underpass connection to Dandenong Road and in the early 1970s St Kilda Road (formerly High Street) from the junction to Carlisle Street was widened by demolishing all the properties on the west side. The landmark Junction Hotel was lost, and High Street, once St Kilda's shopping centre, ceased to function as such. The widening also had the effect of creating a physical barrier between St Kilda's foreshore, civic area and eastern residential streets. Gentrification In 1987, the St Kilda railway line was closed, rationalised and re-opened to become part of route 96, one of the first light rail lines in Melbourne, terminating at Acland Street. St Kilda also experience increased gentrification during the 1990s, particularly popular with yuppies due to its proximity to the CBD. The increased cost of rentals led many long term residents to leave and removed much of the bohemian and artistic character of the area. In 1991, the site formerly occupied by the St Moritz ice rink was reopened as the St Moritz hotel, which became the Novotel Bayside in 1993, then Novotel St Kilda in 1999. Tim Costello, then the mayor of St Kilda, for a few months before council amalgamations, worked closely with local social welfare groups between 1993 and 1994 to try and clean up the city's streets but this largely failed and combined with the legalisation of registered indoors prostitution, St Kilda's streets were becoming the location of prostitutes that were not suitable for registration in legal brothels due to illegal drugs and other issues. Violence is almost a daily hazard, with one murdered in 2003 and another in 2004, with the notorious Greeves St coming under heavy police presence after hours. The sordid "clients" driving by are prosecuted by the police too. In mid-1998, Becton, new owners of the Esplanade Hotel announced its plan to build a 125-metre, 38-storey tower behind the historic hotel. The plans were later scaled down due to resident concerns. On 11 September 2003, the St Kilda icon, the 99-year-old pier kiosk burned down in an arson attack.[22] In a swift and overwhelming response to the loss, the government committed to its original plans using what remained of the original materials. In 2004, Baymour Court, significant 1920s Spanish Mission flats and hotel stables were demolished despite the campaigning of the National Trust of Victoria and The Esplanade Alliance as part of the commencement of hi-rise Esplanade apartment building. For the 2006 Commonwealth Games, St Kilda hosted an interpretive public artwork called the Lady of St Kilda, a mock timber sculpture of the shipwreck. The installation was visited by locals and tourists and it was left erected for many months afterward. However, the sculpture was subject to vandals disassembling parts of it as well as concern for children's safety on the high unprotected bow of the "ship" so the local council removed it in November 2006. The area adjacent to the Palais Theatre known as the Triangle Site, including the Palace music venue, is the subject of a major re-development, first proposed in 2005. The proposals stipulated the restoration of the Palais Theatre, but controversially many advocated the demolition of the Palace, one of the area's main live music venues.[23] To save the Palace, a legal battle ensued. Ironically, the Palace burned down spectacularly during an arson attack,[24] and fears were held for the Palais. The winning development in 2007 plans a series of lanes, promenades and walkways rambling through eating and drinking spaces, art installations, entertainment venues, retail outlets and open grassy spaces. Further controversy over the new development was caused when the tenants who vacated the Palais illegally removed its 80-year-old chandeliers.[25] In 2006, plans went out for a foreshore re-development, which included promenade widening and saw the demolition of the bicentennial pavilion which marked the land end of the St Kilda pier. In 2006, the proposed development of a skate park and concrete urban plaza over parkland on Fitzroy Street next to the primary school at Albert Park caused significant local controversy. The council received a large number of objections. Alternative sites along the foreshore were ignored by council and all of the mature trees on the site were removed before the plans were presented for consultation. In February 2008, the Port Phillip Council's approval of the proposed Triangle site development despite over 5,000 written objections (representing over a quarter of the population of St Kilda) caused an uproar in St Kilda which saw media attention across Victoria[26] with local resident lobby groups including Save St Kilda[27] and UnChain St Kilda[28] banding thousands of residents together in protest and enlisting the help of celebrities including Dave Hughes, Magda Subzanski and Rachel Griffiths in their fight against the local council. The council had refused to allow a secret agreement between it, the developers and state government to be released which effectively allowed for the transfer of ownership of a large amount of crown land to private owners. As well as the outrage over the sale of public land, many residents believed that the state government and council should have funded the restoration of the heritage Palais themselves rather than pass the costs on to the developers who had proposed a larger development to recover their own costs. In May 2008, the skate park development was stopped by the Supreme Court of Victoria, claiming that the council had acted inappropriately. A hearing was scheduled with the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. The mayor at the time, Janet Bolitho, was cited to have commented "the area would remain public open space - just maybe not green". In December 2009, a new council elected to largely replace the councillors who approved the Triangle development voted almost unanimously to terminate the agreement with the developers, agreeing to pay them $5 million over a period of three years.[29] In 1981, the St Moritz ice rink was closed, and around 1984, it was destroyed by a spectacular fire.

Suburbs surrounding St Kilda, VIC

South Melbourne, 3205
St Kilda West, 3182
St Kilda East, 3183
Ripponlea, 3185
Middle Park, 3206
Elwood, 3184
Balaclava, 3183
Albert Park, 3206