Holding on to a property can pay off handsomely years down the track.

Two long-time owners of modest original homes in Chadstone and Ringwood walked away with seven-figure windfalls when their properties were auctioned on November 6.

Bought for $43,500 almost four decades ago, an unrenovated three-bedroom Housing Commission property at 5 Amaroo Street, Chadstone, changed hands for $1.45 million.

“No one expected such a result, which is a record price for the area,” Barry Plant Monash branch manager Carolyn Barton said.

“The buyer who recently moved from Queensland was instructed by his wife not to leave the auction without a purchase.”

The buyer was one of four bidders at the auction which started at $1 million and finished successfully without any vendor bids.

The 1980s-built house on 600sq m had a seller’s reserve of $1.15 million, giving them a stunning $300,000 beyond their expectations.

“We had good interest prior to the auction and many buyers wanted to make offers, but the sellers wanted to go to auction,” Ms Barton said.

A similar Chadstone property on a larger block nearby was sold by another agency for a much lower price of $1.341 million in October, sale records showed.

In Ringwood, the sellers who held onto their investment property at 3/1 Ford Street for 22 years have reaped a windfall of more than $200,000 over what they expected.

The modest two-bedroom unit on 283sq m attracted six bidders, including two first-home buyers who competed to the end and pushed the result to $838,500.

The single-level rental had been the most viewed property prior to the auction on realestate.com.au. The competition saw the bidding fly past the $620,000 seller’s reserve price quickly.

“The seller who was nervous and worried if they’d made the right decision to take the property to auction was lost for words,” Barry Plant Croydon director Matthew Jinks said.

The lack of supply of homes for sale particularly in a location so close to everything drove the result, he added.

Preliminary results for the week ending November 7 for the Barry Plant Group saw an auction clearance rate of 89 per cent from 80 auctions, with 71 properties sold and nine passed in.

The week ending November 14 will see another sale extravaganza with 120 properties headed for auction with Barry Plant offices.