Apartment concierges on hand to make life that bit easier

Time-poor young house hunters with cash to splash are buying into buildings with so-called lifestyle managers who  handle their every whim.

Need groceries delivered after an exhausting day at work? Or a recommendation for a new restaurant, yoga class or car service to the airport? Concierges are coming to new residential towers aimed at Gen X and Y, modelled on international apartment living.

Millennials enjoy feeling like a VIP, and concierges will one day be as common as gyms in Melbourne apartment blocks, experts say.

Developer Oliver Hume Property Funds has hired a “lifestyle manager” to look after the residents of its 145-apartment project in North Melbourne, Nord.

Telecommunications professional Ahsen Soybas, 37, has bought an apartment at Nord, on Flemington Road. Residents are expected to move in next month.

Soybas said she was attracted to the project  by the security and practical help that a concierge could provide.

“During the day they will be at home if I need any maintenance or shopping to be delivered, and I can contact them any time I like,” she said.

“And, for safety reasons, if someone was to break in, he is there. And he knows Melbourne, he’s a local and he is experienced.”

RMIT University marketing professor Dr Con Stavros said Gen Y consumers, in particular, wanted to feel like VIPs.

“That notion of ‘everyone’s busy’ has been around for a while and I think I have heard it for several generations,” Stavros said.

“But I suspect Gen Y, because they have grown up in a technological environment, and technology can suck up a lot of your time, there can be an appearance of not enough time to get across so much information, so much entertainment, so many options available.

“They are a generation  – and it applies more broadly – that marketers have worked out in the past have to be made to feel a little bit special, a little bit unique.

“There is a concept in  marketing now in which companies are trying to make all of their customers feel like a VIP. There was a time when VIP was a very exclusive group of people, and that keeps being extended and extended.”

Adele Blair, co-director of the Institute of  Concierge and Lifestyle manager, said the service would  become as common in apartment developments as gymnasiums.

She said concierges could  take care of the “requirements of modern life”, in the same way as a gardener or a cleaner, but also tasks such as reorganising a pantry through to waiting on the phone to secure Taylor Swift concert tickets.

Oliver Hume development director Jason Wood said the concept of a lifestyle manager reflected  a residential trend in Britain and the US.

The Nord lifestyle manager will also act  as a building manager to assist landlords with leases and to organise social events. The cost of the manager is covered by owners’ corporation fees.

“Because Australians typically are not used to living in an apartment building and that vertical community, the lifestyle manager can engender that sense of community, and can arrange for a movie night on the rooftop, or might arrange for a Pilates class,” he said.

“It is something that we are looking to continually roll out and improve as people, particularly as purchasers and renters are not looking just for amenities, but how that building might be able to help with their lifestyle.”

Concierges are  de rigueur in high-end residential blocks in New York and six-star hotels, like the Sofitel Melbourne On Collins.

“A concierge has the keys to the city and knows how to make the seemingly impossible happen, be that sourcing tickets to the most popular shows in town or securing dinner reservations at Melbourne’s hottest restaurants,” Sofitel’s hotel manager Jeremy Healy said.