The sale of the top floor penthouse, which offers 485 sq m of internal space and 825 sq m in total, smashed the previous record for an East Melbourne apartment – $11.85 million paid in 2016 for a four-bedroom apartment on the eighth floor of 150 Clarendon Street, the suburbs most prestigious apartment building.
More recently, a 348 sq m penthouse in Mirvac’s The Eastbourne building at 280 Albert Street (next door to the Luxcon project) resold for $9.5 million, after it was purchased off the plan for $8.3 million in May 2016.
The record for a Melbourne apartment is $35 million paid last year for a 1000 sq m sub-penthouse that will take out an entire floor in the country’s tallest project, Beulah’s STH BNK skyscraper at Southbank.
However, this is nowhere near the $140 million paid in 2019 for the three-level penthouse at the top of Lendlease’s One Sydney Harbour at Barangaroo.
The five-bedroom, six bathroom East Melbourne penthouse sold by Luxcon includes a rooftop pool, home cinema and sauna as well as parking spaces for four cars.
Advertisem*nt
At almost $40,000 per sq m for internal space, the Luxcon sale came close to matching the rate paid in 2019 by former Domain boss Antony Catalano for the $30 million penthouse in Tim Gurner’s St Moritz development in St Kilda.
Mr Melnikoff said he was optimistic high-end stock in triple A-grade locations like East Melbourne will still prevail given buyers at this end of the market are not reliant on mortgage funding.
“The buyers of the penthouse and sub-penthouse sold [their previous] properties for more than $20 million and $25 million. They are cashing out into lower maintenance, high security properties,” he told The Australian Financial Review.
He added that a similar penthouse in Sydney would have sold at around $100,000 per sq m. “The Melbourne luxury apartment has some way to go,” Mr Melnikoff said.
Ms Case who also brokered The Eastbourne penthouse sale and a number of other record deals in East Melbourne, said local downsizers from the south-eastern suburbs were the buyers of most of these luxury properties.
