Three Of Sydney CBD’s Most Luxurious Penthouses
Sydney’s prestige market is looking up, here’s three of the best on the market right now.
3 min
The last few years has seen a considerable uptake in apartment living across Sydney, notably in the prime market as driven by a slew of new luxury developments.
It’s meant recent Australian sales records – cue Crown’s One Barangaroo and its waterside neighbour, One Sydney Harbour – as purchasers look to secure a standout property and also embrace the benefits of expansive inner-city living.
While the penthouses of the aforementioned towers are now gone, there remains some unique, cloud-catching CBD abodes available.
Here, three of the best to purchase now.
3303/203 Castlereagh Street, Sydney, NSW 2000
The Castle Penthouse, located in Castle Residences and designed by Candelepas & Associates architects, sees a 4-bedroom, 4- bathroom, 2-car parking residence delivered in the heart of Sydney’s CBD.
Here a rooftop terrace boasts breathtaking views over Hyde Park and the city skyline, with an extensive and undoubtedly luxurious finish by Studio Aria ensuring it is one of the finest properties in Australia.
The penthouse is reached via a private lift, through a double door entrance and sees opulent finishes including the use of stone benchtops, large porcelain tiles and bespoke joinery.
Expect an open-plan design, leading outwards to the buildings highly desirable winter gardens. It’s here you’ll find an opulent kitchen, complete with Gaggenau appliances.
The penthouse is also offers a master bedroom that spans the top floor, and opens out to a sky garden with decked spa.
Those fortunate to call Castle Residences home will also enjoy various hotel amenities – such as pool and gym access as well as desirable in-house dining sourced via local restaurants such as Henry’s Bread and Wine, Dixon & Sons and Spice Trader. Meanwhile, housekeeping, concierge, valet parking and 24-hour security are all accessible via in-house app.
The property is expected to welcome residents from end of August 2021.
The listing is with McGrath Pyrmont’s Robert Alfeldi (+61 418 982 688); mcgrath.com.au
Level 43/163 Castlereagh Street Sydney NSW 2000
Much has already been written about the Boyd Residence. The grand, lavish, award-winning penthouse sits some 180-metres above street level offering. 2395sqm in the heart of the CBD.
Spread across three levels comes 4-bedroom, 5-bathrooms and 2 car parking. Inside sees unprecedented levels of privacy and opulence, with 24-hour security.
Accessed via private lift, it opens to a glass wall with built-in champagne storage. Elsewhere a sleek fireplace, multiple seating groupings and walls of glass take in the panorama of the city.
Each bedroom suite arrives with a marble bathroom, while the rest of the residence is framed by double-height ceiling and dramatic walls of glass.
Also, a resort-style private rooftop pool tops the living space, adding further luxury to the pad.
The listing is with Christie’s International’s Ken Jacobs (+61 407 190 152) and LJ Hooker Double Bay’s Bill Malouf (0411 428 354); theboydresidence.com.au
83.01/115 Bathurst Street, Sydney, NSW 2000
Known as the ‘King’ Penthouse, comes this luxurious pad inspired by the global cities of New York and London.
Here, at the very pinnacle of the Greenland Centre tower comes panoramic views of the CBD, Blue Mountains, Hyde Park and Sydney Harbour.
The 4-bedroom, 4-bathroom, 4-car parking penthouses offers sophisticated details, with glamorous stone island benchtops in the kitchen and concealed scullery, to towering balconies overlooking Sydney.
The master bedroom features an opulent dressing room that opens to reveal handsome timber-panelled interiors with wide drawers and open display shelving for all your finery, handbags, watches, belts and scarves
The master bathroom is cloaked in emerald green marble and features high-quality fixtures, a free-standing bath and heated towel rack bringing minimalist glamour while a soaring skylight adds luminous radiance.
Further amenities include a 30-metre outdoor pool, gym, spa, sun deck, and multi-function residents’ room.
Contact Ben Stewart (+61 412753740) of CBRE for more information; thegreenlandcentre.com.au
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.
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
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