Five homeowners in Dover Rd, Rose Bay recently sold their properties to an apartment developer for a total of $75m. Source: Million Dollar Listing, Sydney.
Developers are knocking on doors from Rose Bay in Sydney’s east to Mosman on the north shore offering homeowners fortunes to sell up to make way for apartments.
Property owners within 800m of 171 nominated sites around NSW are sitting on potential gold mines, all thanks to a new state government policy to encourage apartment development within 800m of shops and transport.
“It is real gold, and not fool’s gold, if you’ve got an unrenovated house on a large block of land,” says prominent eastern suburbs agent Ric Serrao of the State Government Low and Mid-Rise Housing Policy.
The policy could potentially double the value of homes and in one case in Sydney’s east a vendor who “couldn’t get a nibble at $8m” for nine months has now sold his humble property for $16m.
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No 23 Dover Rd, Rose Bay sold for $16m … the owner had previously tried to sell it for $8m but “couldn’t get a nibble”.
In Mosman, Mayor Anne Marie Kimber told The 7.30 Report that if a new development complies with the new rules councils can’t reject it.
“There’s very little we can do,” she said.
About 20 homes at Balmoral beach can now be redeveloped into six-storey apartment blocks.
“It’ll change the whole landscape of Mosman and all the suburbs around Sydney,” she added.
These new laws, which override existing council regulations concerning height and floor space ratio for housing development, came into effect on February 28.
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Mosman Mayor Ann Marie Kimber says if a new development complies with the new rules, council’s can’t reject it. Picture: NewsWire/ Gaye Gerard
The sites are across Sydney, The Central Coast, the lower Hunter and Newcastle and Illawarra-Shoalhaven on the south coast.
Some of the earliest to benefit are five homeowners in Dover Rd, Rose Bay, which is close by one of the nominated sites — the Rose Bay Town Centre.
The five have sold their properties for a total of $75m to an apartment developer in a deal negotiated by Alex Lyons and Ric Serrao of Raine and Horne Double Bay.
That’s an average of $15m per block.
The purchaser was Fortis Property Group, which director Charles Mellick confirmed when contacted.
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The mayor says about 20 homes at Balmoral beach can now be redeveloped into six-storey apartment blocks.
About 20 homes at Balmoral beach can now be redeveloped into six-storey apartment blocks.
Mellick also confirmed that the new housing policy was the motivation.
The Raine and Horne Double Bay principal, Ric Serrao, hinted at the deal in a Facebook post.
“Our office just sold a site … we had one client who had been trying to sell their house for nine months … he couldn’t get a nibble at $8m, that party just received $16m.”
That house was 23 Dover Rd, which property records show is a three-bedroom house on a 544 sqm block that had been operating as the Rose Bay Family Medical Centre.
It last traded for $2.5m in 2009.
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The $75m buyer in Rose Bay was Charles Mellick, director of Fortis Property Group. The new housing policy was the motivation.
The four other blocks in the $75m deal range in size between 496 sqm and 546 sqm and are just regular rundown homes.
Two of them had last traded in 1994, for $550k and $565k.
Serrao said there would be winners and losers of the new policy, with the losers those homeowners wanting to sell that fall just 20m from the designated sites.
He also said residents near the new development sites could expect increased traffic.
Explaining the new rules, policy documents say: “The NSW Government is committed to supporting a choice of well-designed and sustainable homes in well-located areas within walking distance of shops, services and frequent public transport.”
Property values obviously vary in different areas, though insiders say homeowners across the state could benefit from the new policy by negotiating with developers.
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