Land "rarer than hen's teeth" might be part of an auctioneer's spiel, but the lack of available property to develop in Hobart saw hundreds of bidders at an auction in the eastern shore suburb of Bellerive.
Nine blocks of Crown land all sold under the hammer for between $375,000 and $501,000 on Saturday.
Real estate Greg Gottschalk said the auction crowd was unprecedented in Tasmania.
"I have never seen an auction that size in Tasmania before," he said.
"This is the best auction I have seen in 30 years of selling real estate."
Auctioneer Jerome Thiessen said land in Bellerive was "rarer than hen's teeth".
"The market is on fire in Hobart at the moment, we have got the most exciting real estate market in the country," he said.
"This is probably the biggest auction I have done.
"This is super rare. To have flat land near the water, it just does not come up. As rare as it gets.
"We were expecting good results, the vendor will be very pleased, perhaps a little higher than we thought, which is great."
Real Estate Institute of Tasmania president Tony Collidge said the state's real estate market was unlike anything he had seen before.
"I have been doing real estate for 26 years and I have never seen a market like this, where there is such a shortage of stock," he said.
"We believe we are somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 properties short in the Hobart market place.
"It has just been an explosion. This year we look like breaking the record for the highest amount of value of property sold in Tasmania ever.
"It will be the best result that we have had in 10 years for the number of sales."
He said councils had a responsibility to help developers.
"We have 48 major commercial projects in the city sitting there on the drawing boards about to happen and councils are sitting there twiddling their fingers," he said.
"The system should be much more streamlined so that things can happen."
