Behind the constant murmur of traffic lies a beautiful riverside community, but at what price?
A few weeks back Rebecca and I went to Melbourne to do some follow up homework on Geelong and inspections on some of the properties our clients own there.
Staying at the Crown Metropol, we decided to go for a walk and see what all the fuss is about in Docklands and South Melbourne. Researching online verse visiting gives you a different perspective.
At first glance the riverside boardwalk was quite impressive. It looks as though it has been designed as a Master Plan Community. High-rise apartment block, after high-rise apartment block, after high-rise apartment block, stand tall along the riverfront.
Now as initially impressive as it was, there was something missing… Atmosphere!
Sunday morning, a beautiful sunny day and there was barely a person around. We walked for around three kilometres along the riverfront and I am not kidding when I say we would not have seen more than 8 people the entire 6 kilometre round trip. But we must have walked past more than a thousand units!
More vacant than leased shops occupy the commercial space at the bottom of each high-rise.
That’s scary… especially given that the buildings were a few years old now…
Crossing the river and walking passed the ANZ building and into another huge community of high-rise apartments. We couldn’t even see the end of the trail of unit blocks…
Does it ever end???
Apparently not – is there no stopping how many of these high-rise apartments will go up. Wanting to know how popular these were, we walked into the display home onsite to have a look at the next high-rise going up and it was over 90% pre sold off the plan.
wHy wHy wHy???
Was is it that attracts new buyers to such an area when it was virtually like walking through a ghost town.
Not to mention that there are approvals in place for over 10,000 more units to start construction over the next 5 years…
All that aside, I cannot work out how there are so many units that are supposedly occupied and there was no-one about… someone help me here to understand???
Must admit though, the lonely walk was nice…