SOUTH YARRA

JONATHAN CHANCELLOR

Boutique apartment complexes are in big demand in Melbourne’s South Yarra. Downsizers are looking to the luxury the pocket offers in its smaller apartment complexes, where developers have prioritised space and quality over the number of units built. The whole-floor apartments – many house-like in size – offer an attractive lock-up-and-leave lifestyle and are catching the eye of wealthy buyers.

RT Edgar agent Sarah Case says downsizers like whole-floor apartments as they have often left a large double-storey home.

“It’s a lovely change, all being on one level,” she says. “Buyers are downsizing but they still like to entertain, so they need a large living and dining zone, and they won’t compromise on this.”

Case says prices for luxury apartments, particularly ones in boutique developments, will continue to rise, given the lack of stock. “It’s really hard to find the land to actually buy, then you have to deal with a lot of heritage issues, as well as new council restrictions to height and density.”

Case, along with Jeremy Fox, is marketing a whole-floor apartment in a boutique Walsh Street complex. They have a revised guide of $6 million. The 295sq m luxury apartment is one of three in the block designed by Demaine Partnership and was completed last year.

Each of the apartment’s three bedrooms has an ensuite, and the master has its own walk-in wardrobe and study nook. There’s a marble kitchen with butler’s pantry and two living zones, one with a fireplace and the other opening to an entertainment terrace with its own barbecue kitchen. The apartment has been listed since mid-last year, but Case says buyers can’t get enough of South Yarra. “South Yarra is a hub of activity for fabulous shops, restaurants and cafes, as well as now having a great supermarket at Vogue shopping centre. Buyers also love the Botanical Gardens,” she says.

Case says the suburb is where a lot of downsizer friends have moved to. “They tend to move in from Toorak, Armadale, Malvern, Hawthorn, Canterbury, Kew and of course other places.” The hotspot is the streets inward from Chapel Street and St Kilda Road, with one of the most sought-after addresses bookended by the Royal Botanical Gardens and Fawkner Park.

“The Botanical Gardens precinct is a small and unique spot, very much like East Melbourne, with the same buyer demographic and very similar prices for both apartments and houses,” Case says.

On Domain Street is the luxury apartment of Jane Hiscock. She and her husband, Steve, split their time between Melbourne and France, where they have restored a number of historic properties through the years. Back in 2010 they bought Chateau

Boutique style

Downsizers are looking for luxury in small spaces

Du Jonquay from New York interior designer Todd Hase and restored it.

In 2016 the pair paid $5.5 million for their Melbourne bolthole, the first-level apartment in Domain South Yarra, designed by David Hicks and set in gardens by Jack Merlo. Hicks’s design touch is there for all to see. There’s a chevronpatterned parquetry floor in the marble kitchen, and open-plan living spaces that meet the main terrace. A second sitting room opens to another terrace. The three ensuite bathrooms feature chequerboard marble floors.

Spanning the whole of the first level in the block of three, the apartment has three bedrooms, including a master suite with a dressing room and a third private terrace. A smart home, it also features a decadent wine room beside the four-car garage.

Abercromby’s Toorak agent Jock Langley, who is marketing the property with Emma Pierson, says the apartment is South Yarra at its most seductive. They have a $6 million to $6.6 million guide.

The somewhat dated Robin Boyd-designed Domain Park Flats complex saw its penthouse sell last year for $7.6m, $2.6m above reserve. It was bought by Gary Theodore, creative director of fashion label Scanlan Theodore.

On its completion the 20-storey 1960s complex, Boyd’s first apartment complex, was Victoria’s tallest residential building.

The project now attracting buyer interest is the forthcoming Botanic Collection, the boutique apartment complex that comprises Garden Lane, Thirty Anderson, Martin House and Kurneh Place.

It is being developed on the compound that had belonged to Marion Page, the daughter of prominent businessman Sir Clive McPherson, for the past five decades. It was sold for $33m to Jetty Surf retail founder Fadil “Butch” Sadikay in 2016. The Botanic Collection is 60 per cent sold, with prices ranging from $3 million to $20 million through Kay & Burton agent Damon Krongold.

In the recently completed Millswyn complex, which replaced a 1960s hotel, nine out of the 10 apartments have been sold. The project was built in the grounds of Millswyn Court, a historic Victorian Italianate mansion built in 1886 for one of South Yarra’s original settlers, James Gatehouse.

Millswyn was undertaken by architect Rob Mills and is set in manicured gardens designed by landscape architect Paul Bangay.

It was developed by the Pask Group led by Dean Pask, whose father Neville Pask had established the group in 1969 in southeast Queensland.