Hello 166 Wellington forum,
Allow me to introduce myself. I am a property investor and have been looking to invest in the Melbourne CBD apartment market for the last 5 or 6 months. I have inspected literally dozens of apartments both in the city and in the southbank and inner city locales.
Can I applaud the owners for having a "residents and owners" forum and while seen commonly overseas it is not something you see very often in Australia. It does allow anyone including prospective buyers like myself and presumably others, to really see what issues go on 'behind the scenes' and how they are handled. This is not always a good thing, as I point out below.
This is the second apartment I have walked though at 166 Wellington Pde. and even though the apartments have been in the lower range of my budget, I haven't realistically been able to give serious consideration to actually buying here as things stand. As a potential buyer I share these thoughts in the hope some of these issues in the development are addressed. Additionally, I hope that owners may appreciate some feedback from someone "external" so to speak casting a critical eye over your development.
- Body corporate fees seem over-priced for this development. Even taking into account the lifts and pool (both big expenditure items) it is clear from looking over the last several financial statements provided by the selling agent that the owners have lost all control of cost management. By way of comparison, B.C. fees at the development right next door at 1 Powlett St. are considerably less (around 25% less) on a "like for like" dwelling. I could give some examples if anyone is interested but I suspect current owners will only be too aware of the issues.
- Having an online forum is one thing, but why are most of the issues raised on the forum not responded to? If you are going to have an online community forum for the building then you must invest the time to ensure proper responses to the issues where they are raised i.e. on this forum. Even from my brief and cursory inspections, I can still see in evidence many of the issues raised here over a long period of time. For example, the non-response to the numerous noise complaints raised here are a serious concern to me and presumably other potential buyers.
- On the day I inspected this apartment, the hallway had the distinctive stench of cigarette smoke. This issue was raised on the forum last year and was not responded to. Clearly nothing has been done to address it and the issue persists. Presumably residents either put up with it or move on.
- Frank (the agent at Caine R/e) kindly agreed to show me around the building, including the pool and sauna-gym area. He would have been better not to. Inspection of the sauna revealed the internal wooden lamp shade broken and resting in pieces on the floor. The "gym" (proudly stated in the promotional material) is more like the junk cupboard where the broken equipment is housed. Frank tried to downplay my expectations as we made our way there and clearly he knows this is not a selling point for the property, and very likely putting some buyers off the property.
- Cleanliness and tidiness. The building just does not look like a lot of care and attention is going into upkeep and maintenance, especially not on par with the high B.C. fees being collected.
While it would be easy to dismiss my comments from essentially someone who knows nothing of this development, I have reached this opinion after viewing a number of comparable properties and I hope that the owners reading this forum find them helpful.
I note this apartment is still on the market after failing at Auction, which may vindicate some of my musings here.