Staff reporterDecember 7, 2020
Sydney-based developer Ceerose said the absence of foreign buyers had left it with unsold apartments.
Chinese buyers, including many local Chinese Australians with capital from mainland China, accounted in good times for up to half of Ceerose's clientele, the Australian Financial Review noted.
"This year the market's hit the handbrake," Ceerose director Edward Doueihi said.
"It's really affected us.
"We've taken our developments off the market now. We've stopped marketing. We've stopped buying sites. In Sydney it's very negative."
He was now renting 100 of his unsold apartments across Sydney's inner west, north shore and the CBD.
"We're holding a lot of stock," he said. "We just rent them out now. We can't move them."
Doueihi said the role landlord was not one he'd traditionally played.
Donehi noted a further complication was a simultaneous slowdown in the sales and rental markets.
Doueihi added the weaker rental market meant his average rent across one, two and three-bedroom apartments was $650 per week, about $50 less than landlord investors secured a year ago.
His units were all occupied, but it had taken an average six weeks.
"I've never seen markets in 32 years that the rental market's been affected and the residential sales have been affected," he said.
"It's scary."
