Gurner's South Melbourne high-rise a hit with downsizers

Gurner's South Melbourne high-rise a hit with downsizers
Staff ReporterJuly 11, 2017

Developer Tim Gurner has sold almost all the apartments in his off-the-plan Albert Park Residences Melbourne high-rise project.

It saw strong interest from downsizers.

Gurner sold 97 percent of the apartments in Albert Place Residences on Bowen Crescent in South Melbourne in just two weeks, The Australian Financial Review reported.

The tower had originally featured 160 apartments, but was reduced to 140 after downsizers chose to combine apartments to create large residences.

The result was eight half-floor residences all ranging between $4.5 million to $5.5 million. The total sales sat at $140 million.

Gurner said he took a calculated risk by offering a third of the apartments in the tower, designed by Elenberg Fraser, as three-bedders to "test the scale and breadth of the downsizer market" but that it had "paid off in spades”, the BRW Rich Lister was quoted by the AFR as saying.

Albert Place Residences is expected to be complete by 2019. 

"People have been talking about the downsizer market for years and I never believed it as we were not seeing it on the ground," he said.

Demand is being fuelled by a surge in house prices which has seen many homes in Toorak, South Yarra and Albert Park literally double in value in the past three to four years.

"Houses that were worth $3 million to $8 million in these suburbs are now worth $6 million to $15 million and this means wealthy downsizers have $6 million to play with now rather than $3 million from the sale of their family home," he said.

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