IN A knockout sale, the Carss Park mansion of champion boxer Kostya Tszyu and his wife, Natasha, sold for $3.5 million, setting a record for the suburb by more than $1 million.
In a deal reached yesterday, the house sold to an international buyer for its reserve price.
The Benwerrin Avenue property, which occupies 2400 square metres with two titles, had passed in on a bid of $3.25 million last weekend.
The Tszyus's six-bedroom, eight-bathroom residence has been renovated and extended since the couple bought it for $785,000 in 2000.
As the sale beat the previous record price for Carss Park of $2.45 million, real estate observers said the pain of rapidly rising rents is not over for Sydneysiders.
Despite the latest census showing the city's median weekly rent had jumped 40.4 per cent since 2006 to $351, the increases will keep coming, Andrew Wilson, the senior economist for Fairfax-owned Australian Property Monitors, predicts.
Dr Wilson said Sydney has fallen so far behind in meeting demand for housing that he could see no relief from rent increases over the next five years.
Welfare and housing affordability groups also fear future rental increases will continue to massively outstrip the growth of household incomes, unless governments take bold action. Sarah Toohey, the campaign manager of Australians for Affordable Housing, said: ''Unless we see action to fix what are the structural problems in our housing system … we will see a similar increase in rents for people. Particularly for households on low incomes in the rental market, Sydney is the worst of the worst.''
Nearly a third of Sydney households rent.
Dr Wilson said Sydney rents would continue to rise because there was not enough fringe or high-rise development taking place to meet demand.
Sue King, from Anglicare Sydney, said the lack of affordable housing had become so bad thatpeople ''are actually going hungry because they have got to make choices between a roof over their head and putting food on the table''.