Georges Hall house for sale where Hamad Assaad was murdered
A SYDNEY house where a gangland figure was brutally murdered last year is up for sale for a cool $1.1 million.
“Large wide driveway and bonus rear lane access, making a great family home or even better, investment,” reads the listing for 51 Sturt Avenue, Georges Hall.
The ad fails to mention that the “large wide driveway” is where 29-year-old Hamad Assaad was gunned down by two men in front of his 12-year-old nephew as he left the house on October 25 last year.
The execution was part of a series of tit-for-tat shootings among warring Sydney crime families. Police suspected Assaad was involved in the shooting of Walid “Wally” Ahmad at a Bankstown shopping centre in April 2016.
The suspected trigger-man in Assaad’s murder, 29-year-old Kemal “Blackie” Barakat, was shot dead in the bedroom of his Mortlake apartment in March this year.
Earlier this week, his suspected accomplice, Osama Hawat, 24, was dramatically arrested at his Greenacre home. Police allege Hawat acted as a “lookout”, carrying out surveillance on the Georges Hall home in the lead-up to the killing.
“It doesn’t make it an easy sale,” said Ray White Bankstown’s George Bakhos.
Mr Bakhos said he had been giving the history of the four-bedroom, two-bathroom property “to all and sundry”, and details of the incident were contained in a clause in the contract.
In NSW, it is against the law to sell a property without disclosing any “material fact” about its history. The law was highlighted in 2004 by the Sef Gonzales case, when two LJ Hooker agents sold the Sydney home where Gonzales had murdered his mother, father and sister three years earlier, without telling the buyers.
The two agents were fined $20,900 for “misleading behaviour in promoting the property for sale”, the first time such a penalty had been imposed in NSW.
The house at 51 Sturt Avenue, where Assaad’s bloodied body was photographed lying under a white sheet, looks remarkably different in professional real estate photos.
“This home has been renovated throughout,” the listing reads.
“On offer the main house has three bedrooms, all with built-ins, ultra modern kitchen and bathrooms with all the top accessories, large lounge and dining room. As an added bonus there is an attached self contained flat which has also been renovated throughout and has all the mod-cons like the main house. Out the back there is a great entertainers area plus in-ground pool.”
Mr Bakhos said agents weren’t required to disclose a house’s history in internet ads. “But in the contract there’s a clause saying what happened,” he said. “As a rule, whoever rocks up to the property I have to tell.”
Property records show the home was purchased in February 2015 for $786,000. A $1.1 million sale would represent an 40 per cent increase in value in two years.
Mr Bakhos said the Assaad home had been on the market for over a month now. “It does make it difficult,” he said. “There’s been a lot of interest, a lot of inspections, but when you explain to them the situation they sort of back away from it.”
While this is the third home with a sordid history he has sold, the nature of Assaad’s murder may put off potential buyers, with some wary the home could be targeted again.
“That is a fear,” Mr Bakhos said. “It’s a reasonable consideration. The last house I sold [like this], there was a schizophrenic girl who stabbed her mother to death. I also sold one where there was a double suicide.”
But he said no one had tried to “steal it” with a “ridiculously low offer”. The next open home is on Saturday at 10am, and Mr Bakhos said he was expecting four or five parties. “I haven’t had any serious offers as of yet, but you never know with opens.”
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