Oliver Hume

Inner-ring suburban sites are ripe for apartments in Melbourne, and medium density blocks are cropping up well beyond the city centre.

Housing affordability, project funding and higher density planning policies are fuelling the trend.

Oliver Hume Real Estate Group data for 2011 showed the inner suburban apartment market still dominated Melbourne last year, but projects cropped up in middle municipalities as finance drove developments to shift to smaller projects.

Oliver Hume has reported a trend towards medium density apartment developments in the inner and middle suburbs.

Hayball Architecture director Sarah Buckeridge said projects in Essendon in the North, Mitcham in the east, Footscary in the west and Oakleigh in the south-east were popular. One-bedroom apartments were selling from $280,000 and two bedrooms from $350,000.

Fellow Hayball director Luc Baldi said affordability was behind the rise in the number of projects and the reduced apartment sizes, and that there were very few three-bedroom apartments in the middle-ring developments.

Hayball has designed units for Golden Age Developments in Box Hill. Golden Age project director Ronald Chan said sites in Box Hill and Doncaster were chosen because of high student numbers and good public transport in these areas.

Mr Chan said Golden Age’s Melbourne projects were backed by major banks, and were made feasible by small project sizes.

Nixon Tulloch Fortey director Brett Nixon said his firm designed projects of up to 10 units in Blackburn, Hawthorn, Mont Albert and Box Hill. These were outside the firm’s historical base of Hawthorn, Toorak and Malvern, and reflected a shift in developer thinking.

He said developers were now meeting demand for apartments in more affordable suburbs and often found it easier to gain finance in these areas.

To view the newspaper article please click here: High density gathers pace in Melbourne

Author: Rebecca Thirstleton, Australian Financial Review
Posted: 14, Mar 2012
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