Metro to add to Fortitude Valley apartment portfolio

Larry SchlesingerDecember 8, 2020

Property group Metro Property Development has plans for another apartment and retail development in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley after acquiring two adjoining sites measuring a total of 2,553 square metres. 

Settlement on the two sites at 1 Commercial Road and 977 Ann Street is due by November 2012, subject to appropriate development approvals. 

In the pipeline is a high-rise residential and retail development with more than 200 apartments and a total value of $105 million. 

If it goes ahead will add to more than a dozen residential projects under development or under construction in Fortitude Valley and Bowen Hills, adjacent to the Brisbane CBD including Alex Perry’s 11-storey designer block being developed by Chrome Property Group. 

The 900-square-metre Anne Street site was occupied by a church organisation, which paid $522,500 in 1997. It had been recently listed for sale at about$3.6 million by Yong Commercial Sunnybank Hills.

The 1,450-square-metre Commercial Road car yard last traded at $1.97 million in 2003.

Both sales were negotiated by Elders Commercial’s Carl Charalambous. 

Charalambous says the sales are indicative of the strengthening market for new development sites in and around the Brisbane CBD. 

Metro founder and executive chairman David Devine says the latest acquisitions will take the company’s workbook of current and future apartment developments (including joint ventures) to 2,030 apartments worth $922 million and 800 residential development lots in Victoria worth $120 million. 

“Fortitude Valley has enjoyed strong capital growth over the past decade, with a median price growth rate of 5.5% from 2001 to 2010.  However, the suburb is still ranked as the fourth most affordable apartment market within the 21 suburbs that make up inner Brisbane,” Devine says. 

“We continue to see exceptional value in Brisbane’s inner-city suburbs like Fortitude Valley and Bowen Hills with the availability of high-quality sites, sustainable building costs and good demand from buyers.” 

Metro currently has three joint venture projects underway in Fortitude Valley and neighbouring Bowen Hills in partnership with Pearls Australasia, an Indian apartment developer. 

To date, all 195 apartments at The Chelsea in Bowen Hills have been sold while 200 of 285 apartments at the Madison Heights project in Bowen Hills have changed hands 

In the week following its launch, 40 apartments in the 141-apartment Brooklyn on Brookes’ development in the Valley were sold off-the-plan generating sales of $18 million with buyers taking advantage of the Queensland Government’s $10,000 Building Boost. 

Colliers has forecast 1,800 apartments to come up for sale in the inner-Brisbane market over the next 12 months with a further 4,500 due to be released in 2013.

According to Metro Property an extra 22,000 people are expected to move to Fortitude Valley by 2030.

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Larry Schlesinger

Larry Schlesinger was a property writer at Property Observer

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