MANLY

MICHELLE SINGER

Energetic Melbourne developer Michael Fox is the first to admit he didn’t realise how special a spot his company CostaFox had secured for its first, and only, Sydney project The Bower at Manly. For those unfamiliar with the prestige location, picture this: a slender row of apartment blocks in a pocket known as Fairy Bower faces north-east over the protected Cabbage Tree Bay and the sandy strip of Shelly Beach. Better still, only a footpath stands between lucky residents, their back doors and the Pacific Ocean. To the north is Manly Beach, with its stretch of sand and wide promenade popular with joggers, the Bold & Beautiful ocean swimmers, Surf Life Savers and beach volleyballers, while locals crowd into a host of increasingly health-conscious cafes, restaurants and boutique shops. To the south are some of Sydney’s most expensive homes, beyond which are the picturesque walking tracks of North Head National Park.

The Bower, a six-apartment project with sandstone-clad walls, timber screens and glass balustrade balconies, sits serenely in the middle, calmly surveying the water as if it’s right where it was always meant to be.

A former Little Projects executive whose resume includes decades spent building and running warehouse and commercial projects for Toll Holdings and Smorgon Consolidated Industries, Fox launched his new joint-venture development company CostaFox in late 2015.

Within 18 months, his partnership with Geelong-based Costa Asset Management’s Robert Costa saw the boutique company acquire $60 million worth of sites in NSW and Victoria.

As a first venture, The Bower was a high-stakes gamble that would present some frustrating construction delays due to a number of factors, not least complications relating to site access. Despite six months of delays the gamble paid off and was, Fox maintains, a huge success.

“It was a reasonably big play at the time to do something so high-end and expensive,” he says. “We basically sold them all to locals, and although we had a bit of a journey through the building process due to the tricky site, the result is pretty spectacular.”

Even before the official launch in March 2016, CostaFox inked $44 million in sales, including a $9.5 million transaction for a 291sq m apartment that set a new price high for the suburb of $33,807 per square metre. Unprecedented prices required an exceptional product – architecturally impressive, with next-level customisation and finishes so luxurious they were without peer. Japanese designers Koichi Takada Architects (KTA) and Melbourne-based interior practice Mim Design were brought in to fulfil the CostaFox vision, which zeroed in on a niche demographic of deep-pocketed downsizers.

Wish fulfilment There’s more than a touch of magic in The Bower project’s dream location

Top: Living area, left, and kitchen of an apartment in the Bower, Above: Bedroom and walk-in robe “We sold them all out in basically four days,” Fox says. “I stood up in The Boatshed at Shelley Beach and we held an information night for locals. We had no marketing material that was ready except for some floorplans. We did inherit a design from Koichi that we completely redid, but it worked, it was a success and it was very well received.

“People were launching projects with large apartments of 150sq m, and we really challenged that model by offering 300sq m floorplans with three bedrooms and two living rooms, and that formula really worked. The prestige market hadn’t been tested too much before this and proved to be very strong. Locals in the area were finding it very hard to downsize into something decent in both size and location.”

Although the pressure was off after the extraordinary sales period, construction wasn’t without its issues. It started in August 2016, and practical completion was initially scheduled for 2018 but finally arrived in late July, 2019. Rain during the initial earthworks and the extreme level of detail in each apartment contributed to the setbacks.

Fox’s tone as he reflects on the project is a mix of pride and a touch of envy, like a stage parent whose child has outshone even their greatest accomplishments. Although there have been no resales, he recognises that everyone who bought “has done extremely well”, with Manly prestige property prices continuing to flourish.

The square metre price record was broken again in 2018 and stands at $41,000 following the sale of a freehold 1985-built apartment, spanning 140sq m and located next door to The Bower, that sold for $5.7 million.

“When we set those price records those benchmarks continued to tumble, prices kept rising and developments just got more expensive on the back of The Bower,” Fox says ruefully.

“There’s such a scarcity of sites like that, and I guess coming from Melbourne we probably didn’t realise how special it was and how hard they are to come by. There’s nothing that compares to it in Melbourne, and when we tried to do it again and find something similar we couldn’t compete, we were priced out.”

Four years down the track, Fox remains “desperate” to buy something else in Sydney, eager to take another crack at the prestige residential market. Until he finds the right site for the right price, he’s chipping away at CostaFox’s commercial, industrial and high-density residential pipeline, which he estimates to be worth up to $400 million.

“It’s been just over four years since I found Robert Costa as a new partner and it was a great move. We’ve got a good name around town and we’re hoping to build on that.”