Young professionals want to live where they work and play. When 24-year-old Samantha Blayney started looking for an apartment to buy with her partner, Chris Healey, their main priority was to find something close to where they both worked. Sick of a 90-minute commute each way in peak-hour traffic from Sydney's north-west to their jobs in North Sydney, a more convenient location was top of their list.
''It's about being able to do things after work, rather than getting into a routine of coming home, having dinner and then it's time for bed,'' says Blayney, a commercial analyst.
''It's about being able to have a life outside work and being close to nightlife, cafes and restaurants.''
Blayney and Healey, also 24, are typical of most young professionals - and apartment developers are scrambling to meet their brief. If not within a quick commute of the city, apartment blocks should be close to employment centres. And they should have a certain buzz about them, with a sense of community, shops and cafes below or nearby and good transport.
Not sure if this point has been covered before in this long thread, but....
I believe they are happy with units because they are young and mostly childless. Once people have children, in most cases their preferences shift, and having some space, privacy and a backyard become priorities over location.
My name is based on a Seinfeld character, not on a belief of a housing bubble.
Buyers are upgrading to larger apartments rather than houses. Outgrown your apartment? Need more space and can afford something bigger? Once, there was no hesitation: you'd upgrade straight into a house. Now, it's becoming more and more common to upsize into a larger apartment instead. For a three-bedroom apartment is now seen as a genuine alternative to a house and, at times, even a preferable option.
"It's not unusual now to have people who have never lived in a house," says the NSW president of Strata Community Australia, David Ferguson. "We're becoming more like some of the major cities in Europe, where people have been enjoying the benefits of strata living for a long, long time."
In today's market conditions, it can make sense to trade up, too.
"I wouldn't be surprised if people are now looking for opportunities to upgrade," says RP Data senior research analyst Cameron Kusher. "And with the premium sector of the market having been the weakest, it's quite possible that some developers are dropping their prices, too."
Living in a nice, spacious apartment with good common facilities can be fantastic, especially if you can tet it in a good location. It's a world away from living in a cramped bedsit.
It's just possible that apartments, especially those at the cheaper end, are one bright spot in Sydney's real estate market.
Prices generally for units have performed better than those of houses during the past five years, according to RP Data - with units recording average annual growth of 5.2 per cent compared with 3.6 per cent for houses. In the 12 months to December, RP Data reports unit prices rose by 0.9 per cent, while house prices fell by the same amount.
RP Data's senior research analyst, Cameron Kusher, says units should continue to do well this year and the more affordable ones should do best, even though there will be fewer first-home buyers now that the stamp duty exemption has ended for existing properties under $600,000 (it continues for new properties).
Kusher and other experts believe there are several reasons why units will continue to prove popular. The most obvious is that in a city as expensive as Sydney, they are the cheapest way into the property market. And with rents continuing to climb and the rental market in most suburbs very tight, this creates an incentive to buy.
As Melbourne grows taller and increasingly dense, more residents are losing their view and even access to light and fresh air.
IN REAL estate parlance Michael Smolders is living with a ''borrowed view''. Over the next few years the sweeping outlook across Port Phillip Bay from his 27th-floor apartment in Southbank will change for the worse - and there's nothing he can do about it.
''The sun comes over the river and sets behind the West Gate Bridge,'' he says wistfully, looking out through his floor-to-ceiling living room window.
Smolders is unhappy about the future of his view because although planning guidelines for Southbank stipulate there should be a minimum of 25 metres between high-rise buildings, Planning Minister Matthew Guy has approved a 71-storey platinum glass tower that will be only 10 metres from his living room couch.
Despite guidelines recommending a height of only 160 metres, Smolders' new neighbour will soar 276 metres to become Australia's third tallest building, only 21 metres shorter than the nearby Eureka Tower.
Losing his view is upsetting, but that is not what concerns him most. He says nearly half of the $274 million Queensbridge tower's 592 luxury units will look into his lounge room and bedroom, or into the living spaces of his 250 neighbours in his building, Freshwater Place.
''Who would want to be staring at a neighbour 10 metres away and not have another room to go to, to look out at something else?'' the marketing executive says.
''You can't guarantee property prices or views but … depriving people of their basic right to sunlight and amenity is just outrageous. Why would anyone in their right mind want to buy an apartment that's facing me in Freshwater Place? I don't get it.''
It's gonna be the year of the unit crash! Units are fucked because they cost $500k for anything decent and you gotta pay fucked amounts for strata and shit. You can't even take a shit or have a good fuck without all your neighbours knowing about it.
I was on the pacific hwy driving past Turramurra yesterday, those units don't look too inhabited to me, anyone else got any idea how inhabited they are?
stinkbug omosessuale Frank Castle is a liar and a criminal. He will often deliberately take people out of context and use straw man arguments. Frank finally and unintentionally gives it up and admits he got where he is, primarily via dumb luck! See here Property will be 50-70% off by 2016.
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