Southbank Apartment

Friday, 25 October 2024

Ever since I started coming to Melbourne for work a few years ago I've been mulling over the thought of owning somewhere in the Southbank area - which happens to be suburb in the view from the terrace of my work in South Melbourne :

After work I'd look at the real estate prices and marvel about the relatively low prices (compared to everything, everywhere else), and fantasise about having a little place we could come and go from as we needed and we could pretend we had a Melbourne lifestyle as well as a Tasmanian one. 

As it happened the prices kept going down (again, in opposition to everywhere else), and I finally mentioned this idea to Jon a few months before we went away to Europe when one of his work trips co-incided with mine and we stayed together in my usual Southbank hotel.  To my surprise and happiness, Jon was immediately on board with the idea, and later so was Zali (who had the Formula 1 in mind).  Jett happened to be away in Europe at the time so he had to be caught up with the plan later.  

Knowing there wasn't much we could do about it until we were back, we did nothing more except occasionally browse the real estate websites and decide which buildings looked like they had the best facilities. My dream was to have a 25 metre pool and a gym, Jon's was for a sauna.  Southbank is almost 100% apartment buildings so there were a lot of buildings to think about but by the time we got back from Europe we had an idea of what ones we wanted to check out, and what we didn't.  Initially we were mostly looking at 1 bedroom places but then, after mentioning this plan to Paul, he said he and Dani be keen to come on board,  so with our combined budget we could get something larger that would suit us all and be co-habitatable when required or just be able to host larger groups. In the end we set our sights on two bedroom/two bathroom places.  The location needed to be walking distance from the CBD proper (and the skybus), walking distance to my work, and a short run to the botanical gardens - which pretty much fitted 3/4 of the addresses in Southbank.

Of course we couldn't do anything without looking at places in real life so Jon, Zali and I booked a 4 day trip to Melbourne, conveniently staying in one of our target buildings - Melbourne Square. This was our one and only chance to check out as many places as possible so we lined up a hectic schedule of 25 viewings over 3 days. It was intense and often involved RUNNING between viewings as if you weren't outside the building at the start of the 15-30 minute inspection window, it was likely you wouldn't get inside at all, as the agent would come down and get everyone just once, then go up to the apartment.   We became familiar with a large group of southbank real estate agents and we revisited many of the buildings multiple times to see different apartments.

We saw lots of great places, the very best were a bit out of our price range but lots of the ones that were within our range still had great views and great facilites. 

We saw a lot of places that were styled within an inch of their lives, from the music and scented candles to the open cookbooks which seemed to be an obligatory part of styling:

We also saw a few dud places - generally ones which were tennanted and the tennants had no motivation to clean or tidy up.  In one case the agent unlocked the door and followed us into a dimly lit apartment were we could discern that the tennant was halfway through packing up as their bags of clothes were spread about the floor.  A few steps further inside and I looked left into the master bedroom and saw that the tennant was in fact completely passed out asleep in their bed with their feet hanging out the end.  They obviously had forgotten about the inspection and had a big night the night before.   Hilariously the agent asked us if we'd like to stay and look around (what and tiptoe around the sleeping tennant?), but we wanted nothing more than to get out of there as quickly as we could!

Overall it was a fun weekend.  We were careful about taking photos and Jon was great about writing down our impressions as it could have easily all ended up being one big blur. 

By the following Monday - after consultation with Dani and Paul - we were ready to make an offer on an apartment in one of our early favourite buildings - Melbourne Square.  It has a pool, sauna, spa, lots of other facilities and is in a great location.  The Southbank market being as it is (great for buyers, bad for sellers), the vendor accepted our lower-end offer pretty much immediately and we were suddenly full steam ahead for a little slice of life in the big city. Settlement is on the 1st of November.