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There are now more than one million apartments in Australia, and this figure is rising every year due to important social changes in the property market.
The latest Census showed that the number of apartments in Australia topped one million for the first time.
The Census revealed that there were 1,056,236 apartments in Australia compared with 932,862 apartments recorded during the previous Census.
Overall, the Census revealed that apartments accounted for 13.6 per cent of all dwellings in Australia, which compared to 13.1 per cent for the previous Census.
More people are residing in apartments due to the fact that a large proportion of our population is now living alone.
This trend was highlighted by that fact that the Census stated that some 24.3 per cent, or one in four of all households in Australia, were comprised of people who lived alone.
The Census also revealed that there are now some 1.8 million lone-person households in Australia.
This high number of lone-person households is encouraging more investors to purchase higher-density homes such as apartments to cater for the growing rental demand for these types of homes.
Apartments are also favoured by investors because they are low maintenance and generally deliver higher rental returns than a standard home.
The reality is that more and more apartment developments are now appearing in suburban areas especially around transport hubs, such as train stations and shopping centres.
This will create new selling opportunities as well as challenges for all real estate agents moving forward.
The biggest challenge for the industry is that many real agents have traditionally focused on marketing family homes that highlight the attributes of suburban living, such as large internal spaces, back gardens, swimming pools, etc.
These strategies have suited this market with home opens, for example, being held at the weekends to appeal to families who tend to be busy during weekdays because their children are at school.
Selling apartments requires a different marketing approach because the demographics this product appeals to are very different from the family market.
Single people or downsizers without children are free to view homes on weekday evenings and require an agent who can fully brief them on the all aspects of the development, such as strata fees.
In addition, many of these apartment developments are sold off-the-plan, unlike a traditional family home that is already constructed.
Off-the-plan selling can be very challenging, and agents need to be able to go into precise details about a building that has not been constructed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shane Kempton
Shane Kempton is the chief executive of Professionals Real Estate. He is an experienced, well-respected real estate identity and chief executive committed to effective development of teams. His reputation is built on honesty, integrity, confidentiality and ethics, all highly valued traits of this influential leader.
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