Prestige Property: 41 Royal Albert Crescent, Sovereign Islands, QLD

This ultra-sleek residence in Queensland’s Sovereign Island is more reminiscent of homes found in the Hollywood Hills or in the Keys of Miami.

Here, no expense has been spared in creating 1231sqm of living space across four levels. Here, the residence sees 5-bedroom, 5-bathroom, 10-car parking constructed of solid concrete and fitted with bespoke finished throughout.

Inside, one is greeted by the soaring, coffered and recessed ceilings, lashing of Calacutta and Pietra Grey marble and custom lighting fixtures throughout.

A salient figure in the home, the kitchen features a backlit 5-metre marble island bench and is fitted with acclaimed Gaggenau appliances alongside a well-appointed butler’s pantry.

This space flows out to the dining room which features a 6.6-metre ceiling.

Elsewhere the home features a coordinating marble bar which – via 10-metre cavity slider doors – opens to reveal integration to the outdoors.

Here, one finds the infinity-edge pool overlooking the canal alongside the built-in BBQ, wine bar and showroom style, pillarless ten car garage.

The home also sees a number of mod-cons including a gold-class cinema complete with Dolby Atmos surround sound, an Epson 4K projector, tiered seating and a CinemaScope screen

There’s also a top floor entertainment lounge that captures almost 360-degree views (including Gold Coast skyline), with a full bar, powder room and terrace,

Of the accommodation, the home hosts five superb bedrooms. The master suite is an exercise in pure indulgence, replete with a marble ensuite, decadent dressing room – fitted with custom joinery and backlit marble centre island – rivalling the finest luxury boutiques.

Downstairs the home offers a gymnasium, wine bar and indoor sitting area and canal-front terrace.

The home boasts savant smart home automation for lighting, security, cameras, air-conditioning, blinds while an internal lift services all four levels.

The home is listed with Michael Kollosche (+61 411 188 815). POA; kollosche.com

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.

Prestige Property: 41 Royal Albert Crescent, Sovereign Islands, QLD

An opulent waterfront slice of Sovereign Islands.

This may be contributing to continually rising weekly rents