A sprawling single-level family home at 45 Scenic Road in Kenmore sold under the hammer for $4.101 million on the weekend, setting a new record as the highest price ever achieved for a non-riverfront property in the suburb and ranking as Kenmore’s third-highest sale of all time.
The result landed as the top sale across south-east Queensland for the weekend, drawing a crowd of around 200 onlookers and six registered buyers, though only two local families actively competed at the auction. The underbidder, a young family, opened proceedings at $3.65 million before a series of $50,000 and then $25,000 bids pushed the price to $4 million. Smaller increments followed until the hammer fell above the undisclosed reserve.
A Home Built by a Family of Serial Builders
The Scenic Road property is the latest project from a family with an unusually deep relationship with residential design and construction. A practising architect within the family designed the Kenmore home, marking the sixth or seventh residence the family has designed and built for their own use. The decision to sell now comes with a characteristically ambitious reason: the owners’ daughter has recently graduated as an architect, and the family plans to design and build their next home together as a combined creative project.
Built in 2023 in collaboration with Giova Fellows Quod Architecture, the home sits on a 2,023-square-metre block and delivers 798 square metres of single-level living. The design incorporates landscaped gardens, a pavilion, sun terraces, a pool and a billiards and cinema room. Buyers rarely find single-level homes of this scale on sites of this size in Kenmore and across Brisbane’s western suburbs, where developers typically deliver large homes across multiple storeys.
Flood-Free Position Underpins Premium Result
The property’s flood-free status played a meaningful role in its appeal. Kenmore sits in a catchment where flooding is a genuine concern for sections of the suburb, particularly in pockets closer to the Brisbane River and Moggill Creek. Buyers seeking large-block, architect-quality homes in the western suburbs often face a trade-off between size and flood risk, and 45 Scenic Road sits outside that compromise entirely.
Co-selling agent Jason Scott of McGrath Paddington noted the home’s scale, design quality and flood-free position as the key drivers of buyer interest, describing the combination of a recently built, single-level home of this size as genuinely rare in the current market. The result, he said, showed that high-quality properties without compromises continued to attract strong demand even as conditions became more variable. One registered bidder withdrew before the auction after deciding against bidding unconditionally, citing exposure to recent sharp falls in global share markets.
A Patchy Market Around a Standout Result
The Kenmore sale stood out against a broader auction market showing early signs of caution. Across south-east Queensland, 168 auctions were scheduled for the weekend. Domain recorded a preliminary clearance rate of 51 per cent from 113 reported results, with 22 homes withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions count as unsold in clearance rate calculations, placing the effective rate lower than the headline figure suggests.
LJ Hooker head of research and economics Matthew Tiller described Brisbane’s weekend results as resilient overall but noted a noticeable softening in buyer and bidder confidence at individual auctions, driven by the recent interest rate movement and pressure on household budgets. Tight listing supply continues to support prices across Brisbane, with sellers offering far fewer properties than buyers need to shift the market balance across most price brackets.
Strong Demand for Exceptional Homes
In a suburb where the median house price sits around $1.4 million and most homes date from the 1970s to 1990s, the market delivered a notable milestone when a non-riverfront property sold for $4.101 million at auction. It confirms that premium, architect-designed properties in flood-safe pockets of Kenmore now command prices well above anything previously achieved outside the riverside precinct, and signals the depth of demand available for genuinely exceptional product.
Kenmore remains one of Brisbane’s most consistently owner-occupied western suburbs, with high rates of long-term family ownership, strong school catchments across both state and private options, and proximity to the CBD via Moggill Road and the Legacy Way tunnel. For buyers seeking large-block, quality-built homes within a reasonable commute of the city, it continues to attract serious competition when the right property comes to market.
For information on current listings in Kenmore, contact McGrath Paddington through mcgrath.com.au.
Published 27-March-2026.
