Brisbane’s luxury housing market reached a record price this financial year with the sale of an $18 million inner-city riverfront mansion.
The river city’s top end is continuing a steady rise, after the Queensland capital recorded its first $2m median price suburb, inner-city Teneriffe, Ray White New Farm principal Matt Lancashire says the consistent $5m-plus sales this financial year shows the strength of the city’s high-end market.
The Brisbane riverfront has firmly established itself as the premier address, returning to prominence after the confidence-denting 2011 flood disaster.
Lancashire says interstate migration to Brisbane and continued low interest rates contributed to the price rises.
“We’re finding there are people coming from Sydney and Melbourne — there is a big influx,” he says.
“Stock levels at that high level are at a low; there is not a huge amount of houses in that level.”
The agency’s top sales include the city’s new record price, the $18.488m sale of a three-storey sprawling home on Leopard Street in riverside Kangaroo Point with almost 72m of river frontage.
The Kangaroo Point home was sold to Chinese interests but official property records have yet to reveal the new owner.
It was the highest price ever recorded in Brisbane, a substantial increase from the 2014 $14m sale of a riverfront home and adjoining vacant land to mining and agricultural billionaire Gina Rinehart.
The second-highest sale was the $17.35m transaction for an amalgamated riverfront site on Oxlade Dr in New Farm, which is expected to be developed into future high-end residential. The grandchildren of property tycoon Kevin Seymour, who have created a company called Prime Investments, bought the 2388sq m block with almost 50m of river frontage.
In the $5m-plus bracket, sales include an off-market transaction for a Palm Ave established home in Ascot for $8.3m, the $6.15m plush penthouse apartment on Bowen Terrace in New Farm, and a $5.6m apartment sale in the Newstead Pier complex.
There are another three $5m-plus sales expected to be finalised before the end of the financial year. Herron Todd White’s director of residential valuations, Alex Payne, says Brisbane’s top end $5m-plus category was steady driven mainly between local Brisbane buyers.
Last year there were 13 sales valued at more than $5m and 2017 was on track to match that with seven sales settled to date.
“In the past 12 to 18 months it has been pretty active in that top of the market bracket,” he says.
“There does seem to be demand in the local market.”
Payne also points to the $8.6m sale of a riverfront property on Virginia Ave at Hawthorne, sold through Place’s Sarah Hackett, and an $6m estate on the river at Fig Tree Pocket at Aminga Street brokered by Adcock Prestige this financial year.
“It seems we are finally returning from pre-flood levels, people seem to be less concerned about the riverfront,” he says.
Originally Published: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/