Forest District named among top regions for world's wealthiest property buyers

A surprising Sydney region has been dubbed a future hotspot for wealthy property buyers, ranking alongside 16 other  neighbourhoods worldwide picked for high net-worth individuals.

Along with New York’s Financial District, London’s Bayswater and Cape Town’s central business district, Sydney’s Forest District is predicted to be a standout for prime residential real estate, in Knight Frank’s latest edition of The Wealth Report.

The annual report identifies urban areas where over the next five years prestige properties, in this case top 5 per cent of their market, are expected to report greater price growth than a city’s wider prime market.

​”The area has excellent state and independent schools, along with outstanding alternative education facilities,” said Sarah Harding, Knight Frank’s head of residential, Australia.

“The area is further benefiting from the new B-Line bus providing a direct link to Sydney’s CBD and the Northern Beaches Hospital due to open late this year.”

Less than eight kilometres from the Northern Beaches, the Forest District ​stretches from Middle Harbour, north along Garigal National Park and up towards Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.

Suburbs include Forestville, Frenchs Forest, Duffys Forest, Terrey Hills, Davidson, Belrose and Killarney Heights.

Ms Harding said rezoning  around the hospital under construction in Frenchs Forest would allow for high-density development including townhouses, a commercial precinct and recreational amenities, which would have a wider impact on the region.

“This will create a ripple effect in the Forest District, preserving well-appointed houses on larger allotments that are still within close proximity to this precinct,” she said.

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Selling agent Harriet France, of Sydney Sotheby’s International Realty, said prestige buyers were increasingly looking to the area, which recently recorded its first double-digit million dollar sale for a Duffys Forest acreage.

“On that property we had a lot of interest, including interstate and international interest,” she said.

“[The Forest District] is appealing to high-end businessmen, who want to have a big property that’s also in close proximity to the beach and the city,” she said. “It’s got the benefits of that outdoorsy, country club lifestyle, there are beautiful golf courses … and room for horses on properties.”

She noted that instead of having a house in the city and a property in a regional area like the Southern Highlands, more buyers were considering buying the one acreage close to the city. “It’s easier to maintain one property, than two,” she said.

Last year it was Randwick that caught the eye of the experts – it made a shortlist of 10 neighbourhoods in The Wealth Report 2017 because of local transport and infrastructure upgrades. 

The suburb’s median house price climbed 11.6 per cent last year to $2,492,500, according to Domain Group data, with big sales including a five-bedroom Italianate mansion that sold for $6.4 million, a federation manor that sold for $6,205,000 and a four-bedroom home that sold for $4.46 million.

“We’ve already started to see growth in that market,” said Michelle Ciesielski, Knight Frank’s head of residential research, Australia. “We’ve got a few [growing prestige markets] on the run at the same time.”

Australia’s ultra-wealthy population – those with net assets of $US50 million ($54.5 million) or more – increased by 9 per cent in 2017, according to the report. Ms Ciesielski said this figure was expected to grow 37 per cent over the next five years.

“When you are talking about these ultra-wealthy players, they’re essentially looking at properties across the globe and it’s relatively more affordable to buy a prime property in Sydney than it is in somewhere like Monaco,” she said.

However, buyer’s agent  Peter Kelaher, managing director of PK Property, doesn’t expect prestige buyers to flock to the Forest District any time soon.

“Prestige buyers are looking for properties up of $3 million, $4 million, $5 million – there are very few properties like that in these areas,” he said.

While he believes the hospital development could bring more high-net-worth buyers to the region for work, he doesn’t think they will want to buy houses in the area. 

“There will be more high-net-worth buyers that might work at the hospital, but I think they’d be more likely to get a unit [they stay at sometimes] as the high-rises go up,” he said.

“I think prestige buyers are more likely to buy in areas like Manly, Seaforth, Freshwater, Balgowlah Heights and drive up,” he said. “Manly [in particular] has a lot of money moving there now from the upper north shore.”

Neighbourhood watch: The areas that should be on the radar of the world’s top earners

• Sant’Ambrogio, Milan
• Potsdamer Straße, Kurfürstenstraße and Gleisdreieck, Berlin
• Red mountain, Aspen
• Kwun Tong, Hong Kong
• The Hongqiao CBD, Shanghai
• Les Grands Boulevards adné Bonne Nouvelle, Paris
• Thanisandra, Bengaluru
• Justice, Madrid
• Brentwood, Los Angeles
• Forest District, Sydney
• Villars-sur-Ollon, Swiss Alps
• Financial District, New York
• Paya Lear Central, Singapore
• Karen, Nairobi
• La Garde-Freinet, Côte d’Azur
• CBD, Cape Town
• Bayswater, London