Aston Martin Reveals ‘Sylvan Rock’, Its First Home
Step inside the first private residence offered by the British marque.
2 min
It’s no secret that Aston Martin’s design work is well appreciated outside the walls of the automotive industry.
And as such, the famous marque has dipped its toe into a number of endeavours including motorcycles, helicopters, boats and has now unveiled its first residence.
Designed in partnership with S3 Architecture, Sylvan Rock is a home set on a 22.2-hectare property in New York’s green Hudson Valley.
Accessed via a 610-metre driveway bordered by trees and rock walls, the main residence sees an angular form that takes its cues from the rock formations that make the surrounds so unique.
The home is encased in blackened cedar and glass and features four bedrooms, four bathrooms, two half baths and three-car automotive gallery garage (hello, lairs and galleries program). Elsewhere sees a custom wine cellar – wrapped in Aston’s signature cross-hatched lattice design, pool and an 81sqm pool house.
The living spaces give way to nature through double-height ceiling and walls of glass with a columnar fireplace the showpiece. Naturally, the interiors are furnished by Aston Martin home while the kitchen is informed by a monolithic island and private dining table fitted with Miele appliances, column refrigeration and the latest cooking tech.
The primary bedroom suite is glass-clad and cantilevers over the rock ledge to take in views of the Catskills mountains in the distance. Here you’ll also find a walk-in closet complete with a night bar for a pre-bed tipple.
The main bathroom sees two-person shower, double vanity, soaking tub and more of those natural views.
Not limited to the singular structure, the property also features multi-functional guest house “pods”, a treehouse, and an agricultural garden.
Best yet, it can be yours for approx. $10.8 million; sylvanrock.com
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
This may be contributing to continually rising weekly rents
2 min
There has been a substantial increase in the number of Australians earning high incomes who are renting their homes instead of owning them, and this may be another element contributing to higher market demand and continually rising rents, according to new research.
The portion of households with an annual income of $140,000 per year (in 2021 dollars), went from 8 percent of the private rental market in 1996 to 24 percent in 2021, according to research by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI). The AHURI study highlights that longer-term declines in the rate of home ownership in Australia are likely the cause of this trend.
The biggest challenge this creates is the flow-on effect on lower-income households because they may face stronger competition for a limited supply of rental stock, and they also have less capacity to cope with rising rents that look likely to keep going up due to the entrenched undersupply.
The 2024 ANZ CoreLogic Housing Affordability Report notes that weekly rents have been rising strongly since the pandemic and are currently re-accelerating. “Nationally, annual rent growth has lifted from a recent low of 8.1 percent year-on-year in October 2023, to 8.6 percent year-on-year in March 2024,” according to the report. “The re-acceleration was particularly evident in house rents, where annual growth bottomed out at 6.8 percent in the year to September, and rose to 8.4 percent in the year to March 2024.”
Rents are also rising in markets that have experienced recent declines. “In Hobart, rent values saw a downturn of -6 percent between March and October 2023. Since bottoming out in October, rents have now moved 5 percent higher to the end of March, and are just 1 percent off the record highs in March 2023. The Canberra rental market was the only other capital city to see a decline in rents in recent years, where rent values fell -3.8 percent between June 2022 and September 2023. Since then, Canberra rents have risen 3.5 percent, and are 1 percent from the record high.”
The Productivity Commission’s review of the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement points out that high-income earners also have more capacity to relocate to cheaper markets when rents rise, which creates more competition for lower-income households competing for homes in those same areas.
ANZ CoreLogic notes that rents in lower-cost markets have risen the most in recent years, so much so that the portion of earnings that lower-income households have to dedicate to rent has reached a record high 54.3 percent. For middle-income households, it’s 32.2 percent and for high-income households, it’s just 22.9 percent. ‘Housing stress’ has long been defined as requiring more than 30 percent of income to put a roof over your head.
While some high-income households may aspire to own their own homes, rising property values have made that a difficult and long process given the years it takes to save a deposit. ANZ CoreLogic data shows it now takes a median 10.1 years in the capital cities and 9.9 years in regional areas to save a 20 percent deposit to buy a property.
It also takes 48.3 percent of income in the cities and 47.1 percent in the regions to cover mortgage repayments at today’s home loan interest rates, which is far greater than the portion of income required to service rents at a median 30.4 percent in cities and 33.3 percent in the regions.
Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
