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An expat based in the Middle East has pounced on a beautifully restored waterfront apartment on Australia’s most expensive street.

The studio at 5B/78 Wolseley Rd, Point Piper was only tiny — just 30 sqm — but it opens to a common area with a harbourside pool and private jetty.

It went under the hammer last night at an onsite auction via Ray White Double Bay agents Adam Reichman and Nathan Ryland, with its $1m guide considered cheap because its surrounded by homes owned by billionaires.

With four registered parties and three competing, it fetched $1,111,500.

All of the interested parties were investors, planning to rent it out.

With auctioneer James Keenan presiding, bidding opened at $920k and rose in $20k increments to $1.1m.

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The ground floor studio opens out to a harbourfront pool with iconic views.

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Avidan restored the studio over the past year.

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The new owner, based in the Middle East, plans to rent it out.

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He called it onto the market at that point — $1.1m was understood to have been the reserve — and from there it was down to $1k bids in what was a long, drawn-out process lasting about 30 minutes.

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The agents wouldn’t comment on where the Aussie expat, who was a phone bidder, was based, but other sources said it was the Middle East.

The vendor, David Avidan, of the family owned Dare Property Group and co-founder and director of South Head Developments, was happy with the result.

“It has to be a record price for a studio in the eastern suburbs, at over $37,000 per sqm,” he said.

The apartment was in a dilapidated state when bought by Avidan.

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It had been a deceased estate and sat empty since 2019.

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“A three-bedroom apartnemt in the same block recently sold for $18,000 per sqm.”

He also said he was happy to have four registered parties.

“That’s very rare in the current market,” he said.

Avidan had been one of 29 registered parties when he bought the studio, then a dilapidated “caretaker’s cottage” at the base of the waterfront building, at auction last December.

There’d been just five compete, and Avidan had made just one killer $20k bid at the end, securing it for $720k — $220k over reserve.

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In the past year he’s restored it and had it for his personal use. “I’m not giving this up until after the summer, it’s like living in Venice,” Avidan laughed.

The studio was the deceased estate of Patricia Fletcher, who owned it from 1982 until she died in 2019.

It had sat empty since then, with the agent that sold it last time having to empty out its dilapidated contents.

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