Victoria Property, Australia

[greengiraffe]

Melbourne city centre feels crane strain as developers rush in
THE AUSTRALIAN AUGUST 14, 2014 12:00AM

Sarah Danckert

Property Reporter
Melbourne
MELBOURNE’S city centre and immediate surrounds has hit critical crane mass with 44 residential developments under construction and more projects on the way, with Singapore’s Aspial Corporation filing fresh plans for a development this week.

According to the City of Melbourne — which covers the CBD, Docklands, Southbank, Carlton, East Melbourne and parts of North Melbourne, West Melbourne, South Yarra, Flemington and Port Melbourne — the 44 projects will deliver nearly 10,000 apartments over three years. Scores more projects are awaiting approval, including ­Aspial’s new tower in West Melbourne.

Planning documents show ­Aspial offshoot WCL-King has lodged plans for a 23-level apartment building on the edge of the CBD. The site, located at 385-405 King Street, was purchased by ­Aspial last year for $41.5 million.

Aspial plans to build 392 apartments on the site, with shops on the ground floor. The developer, which has also recently bought the Tower 108 project in Southbank, is just one of a host of players from Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and China rushing to get a foothold in Melbourne.

SP Setia, Chip Eng Sang, AXF Group, Greenland, Hiap Hoe, Hygeni, Far East Consortium and Golden Age have projects either under way or in planning.

The rate of development has seen the number residents living in the CBD and immediate surrounds grow by 23 per cent to 29,322, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

“Melbourne’s central city area is the nation’s fastest growing area,” City of Melbourne Deputy Lord Mayor Susan Riley said. “This growth has had a positive impact but requires the City of Melbourne to look strategically at how we protect our livability. We support smart growth, with an emphasis on sustain­ability, a best-practice approach to urban design and enhancing our public open space.”

She said the new residents had been a boon for retailers. “Our transport infrastructure, however, is under strain as we ­accommodate this growing population,” she added.

[Curiousparty]

$3800 out of $500,000 is less than 1%.

"The $900 levy, and a separate proposed open space contribution, would amount to $3800 on a unit worth $500,000, the council said."

Melbourne slammed for vote on $900 apartment levy
Michael Bleby
363 words
14 Aug 2014
AFNR
English
Copyright 2014. Fairfax Media Management Pty Limited.
The City of Melbourne wants to levy a $900 charge on each apartment in developments approved from the start of next month, irrespective of when their applications were lodged.

The city council resolved on Tuesday to ask Planning Minister Matthew Guy to "immediately" introduce the levy so it applies to the 5260 apartments under consideration for approval. They are under a third of the 17,257 in the development pipeline in central Melbourne.

"For those applications which are currently in the pipeline – they've been lodged – if the minister were to follow this advice and the permit was issued on September 2, that would be captured and the very modest $900 developer contribution would come to the city of Melbourne," Councillor Stephen Mayne said at the meeting.

The City estimates the 25,210 people living inside the so-called Hoddle Grid of the central business district will grow by another 14,363 by 2031. To maintain the city's open space ratio, another 3972 square metres of public infrastructure is needed. The $900 levy, and a separate proposed open space contribution, would amount to $3800 on a unit worth $500,000, the council said.

The Property Council of Australia slammed the proposal, warning it would make housing more expensive for singles, families and retirees and could send investment elsewhere.

"While bricks and mortar may not move – investment does," the council's Victorian executive director Jennifer Cunich said on Wednesday. "If the ­feasibility of a development does not stack up, it simply won't happen. That means less construction jobs, less retail activity and lower overall tax revenue."

Ms Cunich also criticised the city for not consulting with it before formalising the proposal, first revealed by The Australian Financial Review in April.

In May Mr Guy introduced a ­standard infrastructure levy of $4500 per dwelling in designated growth areas, but is unlikely to oppose the move and it may not happen as quickly as the city hoped.

"He's happy to have a look at it but would like to see some consultation with the development industry and the community," a spokeswoman said.


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[greengiraffe]

Greenland picks the fast track

Rebecca Thistleton
533 words
23 Aug 2014
The Australian Financial Review
AFNR
English
Copyright 2014. Fairfax Media Management Pty Limited.

Building Melbourne's relatively easy approval system is proving to be a developer drawcard.

Greenland Group, the Chinese-backed development behemoth, will explore future projects in Melbourne ahead of Sydney, where planning approval can be granted for high-rise projects in a matter of weeks.

Sydney development applications can take months, sometimes years, to be processed. In Victoria, projects more than 25,000 square metres are ­automatically referred to planning minister Matthew Guy, who ­introduced the rule to streamline and encourage development.

Despite industry warnings the city centre has an oversupply, and vacancy rates around the CBD, Southbank and Docklands have spiked, developer enthusiasm has led to approvals for the tallest projects in the ­Southern Hem­isphere.

AFR Weekend understands ­Greenland, which is building Sydney's tallest residential tower, has been encouraged by the ease of securing a development permit in Melbourne, compared to ­Sydney. It is believed to be among the frontrunners to buy two development lots on Melbourne's CBD fringe, which are expected to sell for at least $60 million.

Local developer Grocon put the properties on the market at the end of July. At the time, chief executive Carolyn Viney said Grocon wanted to "rebalance" its development portfolio away from Melbourne apartment projects.

Grocon bought the huge site on the edge of the CBD in 2007 for $40 million.

CBRE agents Mark Wizel, Josh ­Rutman and Tom Tuxworth hold the listing, but declined to comment.

Greenland development and ­marketing director, Kang Xue, said the group would continue to look at ­Sydney sites, but did not want to ­comment ­further.

In a written response to questions from the AFR Weekend, Mr Xue said "no comment" about the ­Grocon-owned site, and "no comment" as to whether Melbourne was a more attractive development ­dest­ination than Sydney thanks to its planning ­system.

Was Greenland concerned about an oversupply of apartments? "Definitely not," he responded.

Mr Guy said in a statement that the state's planning system was well placed to deal with population growth.

"In Victoria we provide a strong housing supply to provide for a quickly growing population.

"We are ensuring that we do not end up with a gross shortage of housing, and skyrocketing housing costs, like Sydney."

Greenland has previously said there is "no ceiling" for the value of its investment potential in Australia.

Already, the group has plans to build 1000 apartments near Melbourne's Flemington Racecourse.

The group is building 470 apartments on Bathurst Street in Sydney's CBD. The $600 million project will be the city's largest residential tower. The group paid $100 million for the property and has stood out among developers for its capacity to pay a premium for sites. Greenland paid $47 million for a Leichardt property in March, where it intends to build 288 units.

The developer is also gearing up to launch its next project, the ­$200 million, 211-apartment "Lucent" development in North Sydney, at the end of August.

The Turner Architect-designed project will include studios through to three-bedroom apartments and will be aimed at up-market buyers. It is expected to be finished in the 2016second quarter.


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[Contrarian]

Looks like Australia is also building up a property bubble... just like SG, China, HK, Malaysia...

The only place which is not, is US... where economy is picking up.

[greengiraffe]

Melbourne is the problematic place... not other places... population growth is good and still decent amongst OECD countries...

In addition, Australia continued to have a huge base of rentals, something not many outside Australia will appreciate in a country where negative gearing is a good way for many to save taxes and hope for future capital gains via investment properties.

The key is to avoid the over build areas...

GG

Looks like Australia is also building up a property bubble... just like SG, China, HK, Malaysia...

The only place which is not, is US... where economy is picking up.

[BlueKelah]

Looks like Australia is also building up a property bubble... just like SG, China, HK, Malaysia...

The only place which is not, is US... where economy is picking up.

You might be mistaken They are everywhere!!
Dun forget 1 in 5 people on this earth are actually Chinese nationals!

California is being "invaded" as we speak!
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/06...o-housing/

[greengiraffe]

East West Link hits property prices
PUBLISHED: 25 AUG 2014 14:55:00 | UPDATED: 26 AUG 2014 04:42:26


MICHAEL BLEBY
When Ande Bunbury’s house was valued in the middle of last year, an estate agent said the single-fronted brick house in Melbourne’s Clifton Hill was worth between $900,000 and $950,000.

Three weeks later the state government published plans to build a giant tunnel, the East West Link, nearby. Her house in Gold Street, it turned out, was just outside the line of houses marked for compulsory acquisition.

While neighbouring buildings will be demolished to make way for a ­service road, Ms Bunbury’s three-bedroom home will front building work and diverted traffic for the five years of construction.

She has tried to sell but failed.

“I can’t get a bid on my house,” Ms Bunbury, an architect, said. “The real estate agents say if I’m prepared to drop the value by $200,000, then I might get a buyer. I can probably rent out the house while all that is happening, but it would be at a diminished rate. I would have to make up the financial difference.”

For owners like Ms Bunbury, the East West Link tunnel has pushed house prices in their area into a decline from which it will take at least five years to recover, modelling by the Secret Agent property consultancy shows.

The average property price around Alexandra Parade, the arterial road that will form the eastern mouth of the 4.4-kilometre tunnel, has fallen almost 11 per cent last year to $813,224 from $912,120 in 2013. It is projected to fall as low as $648,918 in 2016, based on price movements of houses in similar relative positions to Melbourne’s Burnley Tunnel, which was built in the late 1990s. The predictions are adjusted for variations such as number of rooms. At the tunnel’s eastern end, prices in Clifton Hill and Collingwood will rise sharply in 2020, towards the end of planned construction, as the local market plays catch-up, jumping almost 52 per cent to $1.16 million from $761,072 in 2019, the report says.

BEYOND FIVE YEARS
Prices will rise further to $1.3 million in 2021, before dropping back to $1.2 million the next year and thereafter rising gradually, the report says.

In the case of properties like Ms ­Bunbury’s, it may not even be over in five years.

At the end of construction, the land earmarked as a service road is likely to be sold for development.

“I’ve got five years of construction then another three years with some other form of building construction next to me,” she said.

The study focuses on the value of properties in relation to a venting stack, or chimney, to be built at the intersection of Alexandra Parade and Gold Street, a stone’s throw from Ms ­Bunbury’s house.

This is one of two planned ventilation stacks – the other is at the tunnel’s western end in Parkville – and is likely to affect the value of houses within a 500-metre radius more than those 500 metres to a kilometre away.

During construction of the Burnley Tunnel, which connects the Westgate Freeway with the Monash Freeway, houses within 500 metres of the ventilation stack at the eastern end of the ­tunnel grew more slowly in price than those 500 metres to 1 kilometre away.

However, since the tunnel plans were published last year, there has been no such discrepancy in the Clifton Hill area. Properties have fluctuated equally, but this may be because work on the stack has not started, the report says.

Even if the longer term offers price gains, Ms Bunbury, who says she would need $1.3 million to buy a comparable house elsewhere, is focused on the present. Tunnel construction is due to start next year – the year her daughter does Year 12. “I can’t live here next year,” she said. “I really can’t.”

The Australian Financial Review

BY MICHAEL BLEBY

[greengiraffe]

Malaysian player Asia One plans $300m tower for Melbourne CBD
THE AUSTRALIAN AUGUST 27, 2014 1:04PM

Sarah Danckert

Property Reporter
Melbourne
MELBOURNE’S crowded apartment development scene has a new entrant: Malaysia’s Asia One is planning a huge residential and hotel development with an end value of $300 million at the Paris end of the Melbourne CBD.

Asia One was established by Malaysian developer Beng Hing Ng and his family, together with fellow countryman Roger Lim Swee Kiat, also an experienced developer. The company has filed plans for its project at 63 Exhibition Street, near the corner of Bourke Street in the heart of the Hoddle grid.

The plans show Asia One hopes to build a 67-level tower on the site, now home to a low-rise office building. The development will comprise 328 apartments, 225 hotel rooms and a car park with 20 spaces. The total gross floor area will span more than 40,000sq m. Asia One purchased the 14-level building for about $30m in an off-market deal in March.

The property — on a 849sq m site and previously known as Citicorp House — was owned by the Suleman family.

The development marks Asia One’s first project in Australia.

The Australian was unable to contact Asia One.

Asia One follows in the footsteps of Malaysian developers SP Setia and Mammoth Empire, which both have apartment projects under way in Melbourne.

The Melbourne apartment scene, which some believe will soon be oversupplied, has also attracted developers from Singapore and China, including Far East Consortium.

[greengiraffe]

No bust to high-rise boom, promises Labor

Michael Bleby
389 words
29 Aug 2014
The Australian Financial Review
AFNR
English
Copyright 2014. Fairfax Media Management Pty Limited.
A Labor government would not curb the Melbourne high-rise explosion by changing planning laws, Victorian opposition leader Daniel Andrews said on Thursday.

Mr Andrews, whose party leads Denis Napthine's Liberal government in opinion polls ahead of the state's November 29 election, reassured an audience of developers on Thursday that he would not change a crucial law that affects large projects.

Labor would not change rules under which proposed developments of more than 25,000 square metres in size bypass the City of Melbourne and go straight to the state government for approval, Mr Andrews said.

"We have no plans to change the way that operates, that is, the 25,000-square- metre threshold," he said after he gave a speech to a Property Council event on Thursday.

"But what we would aim to do is bring a much higher quality of decision-making with a much better process with a bit more transparency and frankly, decision-making that's got ­altogether more integrity than we've seen in recent times," he told The Australian Financial Review.

Mr Andrews declined to say whether he supported minimum apartment sizes and design standards, recommended in a draft proposals prepared for Planning Minister Matthew Guy.Stand 'disappointing'

His comments were a disappointment for the city, Councillor Stephen Mayne said.

The area threshold, in place for two decades, was established when it applied only to a handful of projects and needed changing, Cr Mayne said.

"The original proposal was only on the very few mega towers, but since Matthew Guy has thrown out the high limits, everyone is just changing their plans to creep above 25,000 square metres and get the green light from the most skyscraper-inclined minister in Victorian history," Cr Mayne said.

"We'll be seeking to engage directly with [Labor planning spokesman] Brian Tee and Daniel Andrews to explain the dangers of no checks and balances on the skyscraper front ."

But the council's Victorian executive director Jennifer Cunich said it was good news. "The Property Council supports the 25,000-square-metre rule because it's a way of at least processing and progressing those major developments and not getting bogged down in what can be quite complicated and political council debate," she said.


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[greengiraffe]

Melbourne projects get the nod

Rebecca Thistleton
646 words
4 Sep 2014
The Australian Financial Review
AFNR
English
Copyright 2014. Fairfax Media Management Pty Limited.
Victoria's planning minister has signed off on $320 million worth of development around Melbourne's CBD, including apartments and office towers.

Among the three projects is Lend Lease's 888 Collins Street development, which had designs altered to improve light and ventilation following concerns from the City of Melbourne.

Mirvac's Riverside Quay proposal for Southbank and plans from LAS Group to convert an office building into apartments on St Kilda Road have also been approved.

"Melbourne is the place to build high-quality projects. We have a planning system that gets excellent outcomes, with input from the state government and the city council," planning minister Matthew Guy said.

Lend Lease's latest Docklands project will include 578 apartments across one 15-storey building and one 40-storey building, with a laneway between the two.

The project will create a meeting point between two Melbourne CBD streets, Collins and Bourke, almost 180 years after Robert Hoddle outlined the Melbourne CBD grid. The 888 street number is expected to be a drawcard to Chinese buyers, thanks to the fortuitous symbolism of the number eight.

Lend Lease changed the design in some apartments by integrating the study into the living area to reduce the likelihood of the smaller rooms being used as bedrooms, after the development proposal was criticised by the city's Lord Mayor, Robert Doyle.Conversion on St Kilda Rd

On St Kilda Road, LAS Group will spend $48.5 million converting the 1960s Fawkner Centre office building into apartments.

LAS Group director Les Smith said the building, which was occupied by about 70 office tenants, lent itself to residential development because of its layout and location.

"The location is first class and it has wonderful high ceilings," he said. "We could have put one- and two-bedroom apartments in there and sold the lot to investors in a week, but we're going for more bespoke, bigger apartments, as that market is under-supplied."

Approval was granted for 245 two- and three-bedroom apartments to be built in the block. Mr Smith said the group was in "no hurry" to start works, but the intention for now was to develop the project rather than sell off the building with the permit attached.

The project will be the first residential conversion along St Kilda Road in some time, after a string of projects in the late '90s and early 2000s, including Royal Domain Plaza.'The place to build high-quality projects'

Nearby, on Southbank, Mirvac has received the green light for its Riverside Quay project. The $135 million development will be 21 storeys and include 15 storeys of office space on top of an existing six-level car park. When finished, it will have about 20,000 square metres of office space.

Mirvac will also spend $1 million on works around the public plaza the building shares with Eureka Tower.

The approval comes as Mirvac prepares to launch Wharf's Entrance, the latest residential offering for the listed property group at Yarra's Edge, near Docklands. That project will include a 30-level apartment tower, 11 waterside residences and seven integrated home offices.

"These projects demonstrate Melbourne's strong focus on design quality and building on the liveability of our city," Mr Guy said.

Outside the CBD, the planning minister has also signalled the start of works at a new suburb in Melbourne's outer west, which he said would create about $1 billion worth of construction activity.

Harpley will be a new suburb in Wyndham Vale, which will include 4000 new homes and a town centre across 435 hectares, which Lend Lease will deliver. The first housing lots are expected to be on the market in April next year, and the suburb will be developed over the next 12 years, accommodating up to 12,000 people.


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