'People are still looking to buy': West Melbourne penthouse sells for $2.95 million off the plan

The new home market has started to feel the pinch of COVID-19, but it still hasn’t shut down the nation’s insatiable property appetite.

At The Marker, a new West Melbourne development, a local buyer purchased a penthouse apartment for $2.95 million and a Sydney buyer bought a $1.1 million sub-penthouse.

Chris Paul, director of developer Lechte Corporation, said both sales were finalised within the past two weeks despite significant coronavirus-induced impacts on the property market.

“To be fair, in a normal market we would have sold a great deal more in these past couple of weeks but we’re buoyed by the fact we have had some good sales success,” he said.

“We’re getting 50 inquiries per week, and that’s once we weed out some of the lesser quality inquiries, so we’re really happy with that.”

Paul said approval for The Marker, on Spencer Street, was fast-tracked by the Victorian government after plans were lodged in October last year.

And while COVID-19 measures have seen the property industry take a hit thanks to the banning of public auctions and open house inspections, the company will launch a 180-unit project in North Melbourne in June/July and a further 50-unit development in Canterbury in August/September.

In Melbourne’s affluent inner-east, construction of the upmarket Hawthorn Park development is continuing including its jaw-dropping sky-pool, which is suspended 25 metres above the ground.

Michael Ching, marketing and sales manager at developer Dahua Australia, said sales and inquiries had started to slow in April.

“We started very strong in the first three months of the year with double-digit sales per month and with very strong inquiries as well,” he said.

“We still managed to get through a few reservations after the lockdown was announced, but noticeably, the inquiries have dropped off [since the beginning of] April.”

Healthy sales numbers were recorded by developer R&F Property Australia, which has projects across Melbourne and Brisbane.

The demand was especially strong among first-home buyers and investors, the company’s national sales and marketing director Jon Quayle said.

“We have seen week-on-week and month-on-month sales growth since the start of the year,” he said.

“The market is moving, and people are still looking to buy. We expected to see things quieten down a little after the middle of March, but in fact we achieved 23 sales in the second half of the month compared with seven in the first half.

“Most sales have been less than $700,000 with the majority under the $500,000 mark.

“This reflects strong interest from first-home buyers wanting to take advantage of the record low interest rates and government grants. Local and overseas investors are also active.”

At Sydney’s Cremorne Point Estate, developer Abadeen Group reported upbeat levels of inquiry for its luxury apartments.

“The sales inquiries have remained strong,” said Abadeen director Matt Billing.

“We were lucky because the project was reaching completion when COVID-19 hit. There was an increased amount of trades on site at this time and COVID-19 measures implemented on the site included strict adherence to physical distancing, staggered breaks and limiting workers on site at any one time and working outside normal hours, once this legislation was passed, to maintain productivity.”