Showing posts with label size. Show all posts
Showing posts with label size. Show all posts

Friday, February 3, 2017

Student "Apartments"

There is a social media advertising campaign underway for Atira Student Living in South Brisbane.  The rooms are extremely small:
  • 16 sqm for a studio
  • 21 sqm for a twin studio
  • 33 sqm for a 2 bedroom apartment
  • 55 sqm for a 3 bedroom apartment.
A typical apartment bedroom (4m x 3m) is 12 sqm.  A typical hotel room is about 33 sqm.  A small two bedroom apartment in a low quality complex is about 75 sqm.   There are many two bedroom apartments in Brisbane that are 110 sqm and larger.  These Atria rooms are small.  And they are charging more than $460 per week for a studio.  (A furnished one bedroom that is 72 sqm in a good location is about $550.)

Students are best advised to look at regular apartments on realestate.com.au and compare against student apartments before renting.

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Small Apartments

In today's AFR (Australian Financial Review), there is an article titled "Size rules could hurt apartment market".  The article states:
  • Property investors are being warned that banks may not finance "popular micro apartments" currently being built.
  • Cookie-cutter apartments that are less than 50sqm in size are not cutting it with lenders.
  • Apartments between 40 and 50 sqm are being marketed as accommodation suitable for foreign students.
  • There is a disagreement between developers and surveyors about how to determine an apartment size (measured from the outside wall or the inside wall).  Developers usually measure from the outside wall.
Keep in mind that a typical hotel room (bed and bathroom, no kitchen) is about 33 sqm.  A bedroom is about 12 sqm.  Older apartments are often in better locations and are larger than some of the newer apartments being marketed in Brisbane.  Over time, a typical two bedroom apartment in Brisbane has decreased in size from 132 sqm, to 116 sqm, to 110 sqm, to 95 sqm, to 85 sqm and now 75 sqm.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Different ways to measure size of apartments

"Apartment buyers in Victoria are routinely being led to believe by developers and agents that their purchases are more than 5 per cent larger than the same place is anywhere else in Australia, according to industry experts.

Different ways of measuring and allowing inclusion of balconies, car parks and storage cages has allowed marketing material to claim bigger sizes than appear on property titles, they claim.

"It creates a big risk for valuers that report to banks who use the information about how much to lend," warned Angela Schooneman, head of real estate for law company Minter Ellison. "In tough times valuations can be looked at quite closely – and these are tough times."

Concern that measurements are confusing the industry and misleading buyers has caused the Australian Property Institute to try and bring the state in line with the rest of the nation by urging the introduction of uniform standards within the next 12 months.

"When valuers check measurements of apartments the outcomes are often different to what buyers think they are getting," said David Way, API apartments spokesman and joint management director of Knight Frank Valuations."

Full Story in AFR



I have seem developers and real estate agents in Brisbane, when giving apartment sizes in sqm, include storage cages and even car parks.  So take care!

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Smaller May Have Big Future

The headline in a story today in the Courier Mail property advertorial section:  "Smaller may have big future".  Some points made in this article:
  • Buyer demand for new apartments in Brisbane is for smaller apartments
  • Owner-occupiers prefer larger apartments
  • But in the current market, most of the new apartment buyers are investors (about 85% of buyers) and investors are very price sensitive at present.
  • "With no desire to live in the property they are buying, they are purely looking at the return, and the best returns can currently be found in one-bedroom apartments."
  • In the current market, one bedroom apartments range from 45 sqm to 52 sqm and are priced from $345,000 to $425,000.
  • "The ideal mix [for a new development] is 70% one bedroom apartments and 30% two bedroom apartment."
My strategy is never to buy an apartment that I would not live in myself.  I would not live in an apartment that was less than 70 sqm.  When owner occupiers decide to buy, there will be a shortage of larger two bedroom and three bedroom apartments in Brisbane.

In another article today, Matusik says that Brisbane's CBD has 24% few apartments on the market compared with this time last year.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

South Brisbane Apartments

There are two large apartment buildings currently in presales in South Brisbane.  One is Metro's The Plaza development.  The other is Pradella's Canvas.

The Plaza is 12 levels of one and two bedroom apartments, priced up to $575,000.  It is on the corner of Russell and Manning Streets.

Canvas is located on Boundary Street, and has 141 one and two bedroom apartments.  The one bedrooms start at $346,000 and the two bedrooms start at $538,000.  The one bedrooms shown on the website are small -- 44 sqm internal plus a 10 sqm balcony.  This is about the size of a hotel suite.  The two bedrooms range in size (internally) from 76 to 82 sqm.  They are lower quality apartments, with the air conditioning compressor on the balcony for example.

To get a good idea of how small these apartments will be, have a look at a prior Pradella project in South Brisbane -- Allegro.  Some details about Allegro are here, and video here.  Go and have a look before you buy off the plan, so you can see what a small apartment is like.  Apt 96 is for sale for $410,000, and it has two bedrooms.  Apt 72 is two bedrooms with city views, listed at $420,000.

Or you can buy a top quality 2 bedroom apartment today in Saville South Bank, for $500,000 to $540,000.  Saville is in a better location than The Plaza and Canvas, and is a much higher quality build than Allegro.  Apt 1115 is a two bedroom listed for sale for $529,000, and it is 85 sqm internal with a 10 sqm balcony.  I could be wrong, but this seems to me to be a much better buy than a smaller, lower quality apartment in Canvas which is more expensive, and has the added significant risk factor of buying off-the-plan.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Shrinking Apartment Sizes

In Brisbane, apartment sizes are shrinking.  Newer apartments are smaller than older apartments.  Many two bedroom apartments are now less than 85 sqm in total size (including balcony), compared with about 100 sqm five years ago, or 120 sqm ten years ago.

For example, DoubleOne3, a Devine project, has two bedroom, two bathroom apartments that have a total size of 74 sqm including balcony.  The "Superior" two bedrooms, on the corners of the building are 105 sqm in total size.

As another example, the size of two bedroom apartments in Mirvac's Park development at Newstead range from 96sqm to 112 sqm.  Mirvac builds larger than most developers, to a higher quality.  But compare Mirvac's Quay West development in Brisbane from more than 10 years ago.  There, the two bedroom apartments were 126 sqm.  In Mirvac's Arbour on Grey, from about ten years ago, most of the the two bedrooms were around 109 sqm.

In NYC, the size of new rental apartments is also decreasing, but the size of owner-occupied condos is increasing.  See NY Times.  I think that a similar distinction will arise in Brisbane, where two bedroom apartments less than 95 sqm in total size will be relegated as investor only product.  Moreover, care should be taken when comparing apartments.  Often the smaller newer apartments are more expensive than the older, larger apartments.