With record prices and gentrification, 2020 has been surprisingly good to Aspendale’s unit market.
Two-pronged gentrification is driving unit prices up in a bayside Melbourne suburb despite coronavirus hammering the wider city’s property prices.
Aspendale real estate agents have revealed high demand from first-home buyers is driving the market up from the bottom, while developers have revealed cashed-up downsizers who don’t see price as a barrier are setting records at the top of the market.
A $2.8m sale for 34A Bowman Street set the suburb’s beachfront apartment price record on March 12, the same day the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a pandemic.
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34A Bowman St, Aspendale is the suburb’s current apartment price record holder.
It edged out the $2.79m record set at Lowe Group’s Azura Aspendale complex two days prior for an off-the-plan three-bedroom beachfront apartment.
Managing director Tim Lowe said they were expecting to break the suburb’s record again this year.
They have also seen subsequent high priced sales driven by purchasers from as far afield as Sydney after the “net had grown a little wider” for the suburb over the past two years.
The Azura Aspendale development has a mix of beachfront and off-beach homes.
A $1.534m off-beach apartment record set at the development last week was paid by a bayside local who approached the developer last year, before looking along the Mornington Peninsula for several months only to come back to the Aspendale project.
“Price in this instance wasn’t the barrier, it was more about comfort with the location and purchase,” Mr Lowe said.
A two-bedroom beachfront apartment in the complex has also sold for $1.495m, while a three-bedroom townhouse off the beach snared $2.203m.
Even the apartments off the beach are achieving strong results.
With two beach-facing apartments still to be sold at the now under-construction development, Mr Lowe was expecting the suburb’s beachfront apartment price record would fall again this year, while the off-beach record hinted top-end demand was no longer just being driven by water views.
“And I think this does open the door to higher quality development in Aspendale,” Mr Lowe said.
“But it can’t be skin deep. It’s not just the architecture or the appliances. It’s the whole process.”
The development also features off-beach townhouses, one of which has topped $2m.
Latest Realestate.com.au figures show Aspendale’s $755,000 median unit price rose $52,500 (7.5 per cent) over the past year — while its median house price remained flat at $1m.
Barry Plant Mordialloc’s Chris Kavanagh said units were proving the region’s most popular property at the moment, gaining attention from both first-home buyers and downsizers.
“For many years people would go to the peninsula (to downsize), but now we see that people have realised you can have that lifestyle and downsize to something really nice, but also do it a 30-minute train ride from Melbourne’s CBD,” Mr Kavanagh said.
The suburb, and its neighbours, was also benefiting from a trend among first-home buyers to pursue lifestyle above CBD proximity that had emerged since the onset of COVID-19.
“In the last few months being near the CBD really isn’t high on buyers’ wishlist,” Mr Kavanagh said.
“They want lifestyle as opposed to distance from the CBD.”
14/50 Nepean Highway, Aspendale offers a more affordable entry to the suburb’s beachfront.
Mr Kavanagh said limited listings as a result of COVID-19 would slow the process, but gentrification was definitely underway in Aspendale.
He said a beachfront one-bedroom apartment at 14/50 Nepean Highway was attracting very high interest at the moment with a $550,000-$595,000 asking price.
Mr Kavanagh estimated while buyer numbers in the region had fallen about 5 per cent since COVID-19 had hit, the number of properties for sale had halved with many vendors now achieving strong results as supply fell short of demand.
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