A ‘SHELL’ of a house in Halstead town centre has sold for nearly double its guide price at auction.

The semi-detached four-bedroom property on Trinity Street was sold on Tuesday by Clive Emson Auctioneers Essex for £280,000 after sparking a bidding war in the auction room.

It was £120,000 above its asking price.

Auctioneer Paul Bridgeman said: “The owner of the property had made a good job of the outside of the property and so from the exterior it looks very presentable.

“Inside it was pretty much original but it needs an awful lot of work.

“The house is pretty much just walls and windows.

“It is a beautiful house, but just a shell and needs complete refurbishment.

“It is a great opportunity for someone to do something spectacular with the house.

“There are big rooms and it is a blank canvass in some ways.

“We had people bidding from online, on the phone and in the room as well.”

The property sold for £62,000 more than the current average house price in the UK of £218,000, proof that Halstead’s property market is booming.

Damian Prior, estate agency manager for Oswick’s Ltd, in Head Street, Halstead, said that demand in the town far outweighed the supply of properties.

He said: “Some areas of the market I would say are stable and others are certainly creeping up.

“It really is due to a lack of supply at the moment, there is still a fair few people out there looking compared to what is on the market.

“What does come up gets a lot of interest especially if they are put up for auction.

“We deal with a lot of renovations and nine times out of ten you will find that buyers who want to live in the property are prepared to pay a bit more than investors.”

Steve Maddison, owner of Scott Maddison estate agents, in Halstead High Street, said that the town is a very attractive prospect to buyers from outside of the area.

He said: “We are seeing plenty of buyers coming out this way because it is good value for money and a slower pace of life then what they are used to.

“It is still thought to be a traditional market town and sometimes people think it is a better option than places like Braintree, which have been heavily developed recently.

“If people want a more traditional town to live in then Halstead offers everything you need.

“I do think that this property is something of an anomaly though.

“Most of the housing stock in the area is normally three-bedroom and opportunities for builders and developers are very few and far between.

“Anything for renovation sells well with so many people wanting to get into that sort of thing and you cannot get land for love nor money around here.

“We have generally found that since April last year when the Government brought in changes to stamp duty for buy to let properties prices have stabilised. That really took the sting out of the market.”