Build-to-rent apartments and rooftop gardens: how the City of Sydney is facing the future
The proposed changes are designed to address housing affordability in Sydney and increase the vibrancy of the city
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Developers could be given between 20 percent and 75 percent more floor space under plans by City of Sydney Council to encourage build-to-rent residences.
The allowance will be available to applications made within the five-year time frame from when changes to planning and development rules are approved.
City of Sydney has announced its endorsement of changes to the rules to make building family friendly and build-to-rent apartments easier. Lord mayor of Sydney Clover Moore said the proposed changes to the planning controls balanced the need for more housing with sustainability concerns and the desire to maintain the character of the city.
“Exciting changes include new incentives for build-to-rent housing in the CBD, embedded Net Zero building controls, the promotion of increased tree canopy and green roofs and a streamlined processes for design excellence and major development applications,” she said.
“We are also supporting housing diversity and addressing the loss of smaller and more affordable dwellings as a result of redevelopment.”
The concept of ‘built to rent’ properties has gained traction in recent months as a way of addressing the housing affordability crisis in major centres. The concept is one where developers and their financiers build multi-residential dwellings but, rather than selling them, retain ownership of all properties and rent them out.
Built-to-rent properties are more commonly seen in Europe and the UK, where they have been used to supply housing to those struggling with housing affordability.
Ms Moore said moving to this model would ensure higher occupational rates in inner city residences.
“That is great for inner-city vibrancy and avoids situations where international investors leave newly built flats empty for capital gain,” she said.
The Federal Government announced incentives to encourage built-to-rent development in its budget earlier this year.
The proposed changes would also encourage developers to install green roofs through height incentives, as well as allowing developers 20 percent more floor space for co-living accommodation for students and low income workers.
“We know that students are one of the groups that have been hit hardest by the rental crisis in Sydney, with lack of appropriate accommodation and affordability both major issues,” Ms Moore said.
“By offering these additional floor space incentives we hope landowners and developers will create more co-living accommodation in areas like Haymarket, which has proved popular with students in Sydney.”
Draft changes will be presented to the NSW Department of Planning and Environment.
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The 25-room mansion was built for an heiress and later belonged to a socialite and architect on the Empire State Building.
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A 110-year-old Colorado estate that has hosted Frank Sinatra and Lyndon B. Johnson just slashed $10 million off its price tag.
The 12,000-square-foot manor house—with 25 rooms—and its five accessory dwelling in the alpines of Evergreen was relisted on Friday asking $16.8 million, down from its initial $26.8 million price in 2023.
The sellers, Richard and Pamela Bard, who paid $1.3 million for the “legacy property” named Greystone Estate in 1992, have shopped it around on and off for the past 20 years, according to agent Jessica Northrop at Compass Real Estate.
Richard Bard, CEO of his own private equity firm, has “hosted many corporate events and retreats where important business is discussed but they are also able to relax,” Northrop said. “Greystone has a special way of making people feel at ease.”
Bard said “it’s not a casual effort” to sell. He said it’s difficult to find a buyer with the facilities to “take care of it.”
The Bards intend to move closer to their children in Denver.
Before the Bards, Greystone Estate had several eras—as a summer house, a guest ranch and a business base—since it was built in 1915 by Genevieve Phipps, an industrialist’s daughter.
Phipps, who spent her inheritance on the land, built the 54-acre summer escape with the “elegance and feel of a fine Adirondack mansion combined with a mountain rustic style,” according to an online record of the estate’s history.
Its heyday, arguably in the 1940s to 1980s, saw Sinatra, Johnson and Groucho Marx come through its doors, when its owner William Sandifer, a socialite and one the Empire State Building’s architects, operated a guest ranch out of the place.
The Bards, who used a carriage house on the property as their company headquarters, completed Greystone’s full modernization in 1997. They also opened up the living and dining areas to receive more light, raised the ceiling on the upper level and combined several rooms to create a primary suite.
They replaced an outdoor pavilion and its helipad with something more suitable for their daughter’s wedding in 2001, according to Northrop.
The main 25-room manor includes a wine cellar, bar, gym and library.
The additional structures, which include a cottage, a log cabin, a pool house, a carriage house and a pavilion and guest house, surround the pool area and overlook acres of aspen groves and mountains.
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