Going to auction, vendor is a REA boss

Hi all,

I've lurked on SS for a while now and have decided to come out of the woodwork and have learned much from reading. However, there is only so much I can learn by reading.
At the moment I have a property in mind that is going to auction soon, but a few things about the contract leave me confused. I should mention that I'm rather unorthodox when researching so feel free to correct me on dumb things I'm doing :)

The place was listed at 2.6mil a few times from the end of 2012 to July 2013 under the previous agents according to onthehouse. That seems rather overpriced considering its 1.65mil UCV. The price guide is now more reasonable at over 1.5mil at the moment according to the current agent.

The contract sent over by the current agents lists the previous agent (matched the sign taken by Google Street View) as the vendor's agent. Additionally, the vendor is the boss of the previous agency!

Finally, there is a planning permit for a 3 dwelling complex dated 2011 that was not built and has since expired.

This raises a few questions:
1. Does said boss actually own the property or is this a (legitimate?) way of protecting the real vendor's privacy?
2. If the vendor really is the boss, why would they overprice the property like that if it wasn't going to sell in 8 months? Maybe the price included building the 3 dwelling complex?
3. Do I have much of a chance considering my walk-away limit is not much more than price guide?
 
This raises a few questions:
1. Does said boss actually own the property or is this a (legitimate?) way of protecting the real vendor's privacy?
The guy on the contract is the actual owner.

2. If the vendor really is the boss, why would they overprice the property like that if it wasn't going to sell in 8 months?
REAs often have an over-inflated view of what their own property is worth. Maybe he was not a "motivated" seller at the time?

Maybe the price included building the 3 dwelling complex?
Maybe?

3. Do I have much of a chance considering my walk-away limit is not much more than price guide?
Who knows? Why don't you make a pre-auction offer and see how receptive they are? Then you know if you're wasting your time or not.
 
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Is it being sold as a development site? Does that match the zoning?

What is the end market value if the units were built? What would they cost to build? How much profit remains in the deal?
 
Thanks everyone for the input. The end of this story was a short one: We went to the auction, reserve was 1.75mil and sold for 1.91mil. Unfortunately way out of our range and IMHO over the market price by a fair margin. Just a little bit "over 1.5mil" as quoted by the agent... Glad I didn't blow any cash on B+P. At that price, I'm not sure if I would be breaking even or losing money if it was developed.
 
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