Eureka Tower penthouse hoped to fetch sky-high price

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The full-floor four-bedroom, five-bathroom penthouse in Melbourne’s Eureka Tower is expected to fetch more than $13 million when it goes on sale next month.

Occupying the 84th floor of one of the world's tallest residential buildings, the 660-square-metre apartment boasts panoramic views of the entire city and bay from almost 300 metres above Riverside Quay Southbank.

It has been listed by some of Eureka's developers – Tab and Eva Fried and architect Nonda Katsalidis, who had kept the floor since the tower was completed in late 2006.

It has a marble elevator lobby, study, bar, formal living and dining areas, butler kitchen and main kitchen, home theatre and six car parks.

Its lighting, blinds, alarm system and doors can be controlled remotely.

It is to be listed through Sean Cussell from estate agency Marshall White.

According to Wikipedia, when measured either by the height of its roof or by the height of its highest habitable floor, Eureka Tower was the tallest residential building in the world when completed.

It is also currently the building with the most floors available for residential occupancy in the world.

The building stands 297 metres in height, with 91 storeys above ground plus one basement level.

It is one of only seven buildings in the world with 90 or more storeys and is the 50th tallest building in the world.

It is also the second-tallest building in Australia and the tallest building in Melbourne.

There are a total of 84 floors of apartments.

The Summit Levels (floors 82 to 87) contain only one apartment per floor, and each apartment had an original price tag of $7 million just for the empty space; purchasers were required to fit out the apartment at additional cost.

The tower has an observation deck on level 88, a restaurant on level 89, a communications room and balcony on level 90 and water tanks on level 90 and 91.

The Q1 penthouse, the highest apartment in the Surfers Paradise skyscraper, is perched near the top of Australia's tallest building. Q1 Tower, approved in 2001 and completed in 2005, is 322 metres tall. The penthouse last sold for $4.8 million October 2010, having initially sold in 2002 for $7.8 million.

Q1 is ranked the world's third tallest residential tower after the 348-metre building The Marina Torch in Dubai won formal recognition as the tallest residential building in the world on April 29, 2011. Q1 is the tallest building in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere when measured to the top of its spire and second tallest building behind Eureka Tower in Melbourne when measured to roof and highest habitable floor.

The Sunland development group built 74th floor penthouse has a sprawling size of 940 square metres.

People say the mania for tall buildings dates back to early Egyptian times; and for more than 3,500 years the world's tallest structure was the Great Pyramid of Giza.

It wasn't until 1311 that England's Lincoln Cathedral topped it at 160 metres, a record held until 1549, when its tower was destroyed in a storm. European churches held the mantle until 1884, when the Washington Monument took the title with 169 metres. In 1889 the record was topped by the Eiffel Tower at 300 metres.

In 1930 the Chrysler Building in New York came in at 319 metres, to be followed by the Empire State Building in 1931 at 381 metres. New York's World Trade Centre hit 420 metres in 1973, but it was bettered by the Sears Tower, at 442 metres, in Chicago in 1974.The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, weighed in with 452 metres in 1998 and Taipei 101 in Taiwan with 509 metres in 2003.

Last month, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai hit 828 metres.

It is unlikely to lose its mantle for a decade or more, at least until the next big property boom.

Phillip Anderson, in his recent book The Secret Life of Real Estate, concluded that the most reliable indicator of a looming property bubble was the announcement, or the start of construction, of a new tallest building.

Anderson says easy credit triggers egotistical competition for the world's tallest.

"The world's tallest buildings have had a distinct and consistent habit of being completed right at the top of the real estate cycle," he says.

"Skyscrapers are speculative projects, built mostly by developers with other people's money." Anderson, the managing director of Economic Indicator Service, argues that the confluence of tallest buildings at the end of real estate cycles has been evident since 1837.

Q1 Tower would have been overshadowed figuratively if two late 1980s proposed Queensland towers – Pat Zarro's at 445 metres or John Minuzzo's at 450 metres – had ever been constructed.

The Australian record price for an apartment is $19.35 million in the Mercy Hospital redevelopment in East Melbourne.