Developer Mirvac this week unveiled plans for stage one of its newest project The Finery, which when fully complete will bring in excess of another 200 apartments to the southern Sydney suburb of Waterloo.
Made up one, two and three-bedroom apartments the project is just a stone’s throw from neighbouring suburbs Green Square and Zetland, both of which have seen a multitude of new high rise apartment towers in recent years.
Both Warterloo and Zetland also feature on a blacklist compiled by AMP, which is made up of 140 suburbs the non-major lender won’t provide finance to for the purchase of apartments.
Mirvac’s head of residential, John Carfi, said the developer is cognisant of the area’s over supply issues but is still confident of the project’s viability.
“We’re always cautious about oversupply, but one of the ways to protect against that is to make sure you have the best site in the area and we think we have that,” Carfi said.
“We think we have that have that here with this site, especially with the connectivity this site has. We’re close to Green Square (station) as well as both the new Sydney Metro station and the new light rail system,” he said.
Carfi said the issue of lenders cutting of finance to certain areas could be the result of their loan books being over saturated by specific locations, rather than market concerns and he said the projected population density for Sydney’s inner south requires more dwellings.
“The projected density for the area is somewhere between 19,000 and 21,000 people per square kilometre, which will be the densest in Australia.
“At the moment the densest area is Potts Point and that’s the where real estate is the most expensive as well. People are drawn to high density areas, they want to live where other people are and we see that happening here as well.”
Carfi said Mirvac expects the project to draw attention from a range of buyers, including those from China.
“We see the level of Chinese interest in Australia staying stable around where it has been for the last four or five years and we expect interest from them for this project. One thing people should realise about a lot of Chinese buyers is that they’re not all billionaires.
“A lot of the buyers we have from China are mums and dads who are in the immigration queue and end up living in the properties they purchase.
“Locally we see strong interest from owner occupiers and from people who buy as an investment now with plans for it to be a home later in life. We’re also expecting strong interest from downsizers who are looking for somewhere that’s out of the city, but want easy access to transport.”
