Mirvac offers to pay strata levies to secure remaining sales in Perth project Aurora
As residential developers across the country offer free furniture, chuck in outdoor settings or even to pick up stamp duty costs in order to snag a sale, upscale developer Mirvac has taken a different tack.
Aurora is Mirvac’s fourth residential tower at The Peninsula project in Perth’s Burswood, and the developer is offering to pay strata levies for three years to each buyer of three apartments.
Mirvac will cover the cost of $3,700 a year to a maximum of $12,000 for buyers of selected two-bedroom, two-bathroom, 110-square-metre apartments.
“It [the deal] is available across all remaining two-bedroom apartments, as they make up the bulk of what’s left,” says a Mirvac representative.
Aurora, which was finished in 2010, has 130 apartments, of which 101 units have sold for an average price of $1.15 million. The remaining apartments range in price from $679,000 for a two-bedroom unit with a balcony and single parking bay to $3.95 million for the last of the three luxury penthouses. The top sale in the building was $4.2 million for a penthouse, which was a record price when it sold in 2009 off the plan.
The Peninsula project has won many awards for the developer, including the Urban Design Institute of Australia’s best high density development award for Aurora in 2010 as well as the HIA’s SEDO Greensmart Award for Estate of the Year in 2009.
The entire project will house about 3,000 people when it is completed in 2017. Owners and tenants occupy about 75% of available stock.
“The strata deal is subject to conditions including how close to the asking price of $679,000 a buyer gets. We are smart developers and realise that it is a buyer’s market so we will enter into negotiations on asking prices,” says Mirvac selling agent Chris Plummer.
Indeed, to sure up the offer, which ends in four weeks (May 31), the sale also has to be settled by the end of the year.
Earlier this year Mirvac ran a campaign offering a 9% guaranteed rental return for 12 months to attract buyers to its Mandurah waterfront project, about an hour south of Perth.