Proximity to parks and gardens key to maximum capital growth: Bryce Patterson

GUEST OBSERVER

Finding the perfect apartment development for an owner-occupier can be difficult in today’s investor-laden market.

As the population grows and moves closer to high-density living, many factors need to be considered when appealing to owner-occupiers. While it’s easy to find developments that satisfy a handful of owner-occupier requirements, developments that combine high quality design with large floor plans, great neighbourhood amenities and an enviable location, are a rare find.

Amongst one of the greatest owner-occupier demands is the desire for greenery around the development.

While developers and architects are trying to accommodate this demand with rooftop gardens and vertical gardens on balconies, nothing satisfies this need better than living within close proximity to a park.

Projects such as Metacorp’s Rockley Gardens (above), located at 339 Toorak Rd, South Yarra, adjacent to a luscious parkside location, overlooking the historic Rockley Gardens, are a rarity. You can build a luxury development anywhere, but no one’s creating any more parks so securing prime land directly on one is difficult.

When you combine that with the best restaurants, easy transport, iconic shopping precincts, and a range of lifestyle amenities in one of the most prestigious suburbs, you know you’ve found the right property. Rockley Gardens plays up its unique parkside location by taking design cues from the lush, leafy surrounds.

Project architect Elenberg Fraser teamed up with landscaper Oculus to create an entwined façade for Rockley Gardens of a patterned form of individual planters that meld the development into its unique botanical environs while bringing the verdant views closer within.

Aside from ensuring the steady capital growth of a property, parks and gardens help foster a healthy and social community, and improve the appeal of the area as a whole. It’s perhaps worth noting that capital growth is significantly improved if the property is directly on a park instead of a few streets away.

When you look at what’s considered prime real estate around the world – One Hyde Park in London and The Prasada and Beresford in New York – it’s always the properties that overlook parks and gardens.

Bryce Patterson is director of Capital Property Marketing and can be contacted here.