The top spot to invest in units is North Fremantle in Western Australia, according to new statistics just released by property research group RP Data.
Across 87 individual apartment buildings throughout Australian capital cities, the best performing project in terms of re-sale capital growth in 2007 was Moorings in North Fremantle, Western Australia.
Moorings recorded median capital growth of 29.3% for sales during 2007 and a median hold period of three-and-a-half years. However, RP Data noted that there were just two re-sales recorded within the project during 2007. Moorings has been a consistent top-performing development since 2005.
Riparian Plaza in Brisbane also enjoyed strong demand, with median capital growth jumping by 24.8% during 2007. The median hold period was 2.8 years. Riparian Plaza has been rated as one of the top 10 performers each year since 2005.
Across all of the developments analysed, Brisbane had four in the top 10, followed by Perth with three and Adelaide with two, and Sydney trailing with just one. None of the top 10 developments came from Victoria.
RP Data research director Tim Lawless said the results were “unsurprising, given how strongly the Brisbane inner-city unit market and the Perth property market have been performing in recent times”.
“All of the top 10 developments enjoyed locations either on the waterfront or were located in areas very close to the waterfront, and in most cases the projects were smaller, boutique offerings less than 100 units in the building,” said Lawless. “A little surprising is the fact that of those developments, which were the top performers in Queensland, all were located in Brisbane, with none coming from the Gold Coast.”
Lawless also noted that the top performers targeted to an owner-occupier market rather than the investor market, and none offered short-term accommodation.
“Developments that recorded low levels of growth, or in some cases, negative returns, showed some interesting commonalities – each of the 10 worst performers offered short-term serviced apartment-type facilities.”