The dawn of a new era of rapid densification that will reshape the urban landscape is upon Australia’s cities and suburbs. And with it a more affordable trade-off is emerging to the increasingly out-of-reach Great Australian Dream of owning a well-located family home with a big backyard. The aspiration is still about living large in the wide brown land but just not as we have traditionally known it. Balconies are replacing backyards. Vertical neighbourhoods comprising family-sized three, four and even five-bedroom apartments are the new kids on the development block. Evolving primarily from the prevailing affordability pressures limiting the housing options of a growing number of Australian households, as well as shifting lifestyle preferences, the increasing demand for larger, family-friendly apartments is opening up a new frontier of development opportunity. “It’s massively evolving,” Charter Keck Cramer national executive director of research Richard Temlett says. “More Australian families are living in apartments … three-bedroom and four-bedroom apartments that allow these households to have liveable space. “You can see it in the Census stats,” he says. “It’s definitely an upward trend and for many it is becoming a forced choice. “Those families who may have wanted to buy a house or townhouse 12 months ago, for example, because they’ve had their buying capacity diminished by interest rate hikes and rising building costs, they are now potentially priced out of the market and so they will trade-off and go into these more affordable homes. “But also living preferences are changing and I anticipate that in 10 to 15 years it will be much more mainstream. “When you look overseas, particularly in all of the European cities, a lot of families live in apartments. “Australia, by comparison, is a very immature housing market. It’s only 150 years old … but that certainly seems to be the way that it’s going. ▲ Australia’s market is immature compared to that of Europe, Charter Keck Cramer national executive director of research Richard Temlett says. “The only issue is there is a shortage of three and four-bedroom apartments at that more affordable price point. There’s not enough of them being built. It’s still an emerging market but the data indicates there is uptake. “And so there is a huge opportunity there for developers to respond.” Although a relatively new phenomenon in Australia, apartment living for families has been on a significant growth trajectory for the past decade with Sydney, the nation’s most mature housing market, leading the way. Well before the onset of the pandemic-induced property boom, Census data indicated the number of families with children opting for the higher density housing alternative had risen by 56 per cent across the country in the five years to 2016. In Sydney, the data showed that 25 per cent of apartment households were families with children under the age of 15. Since then, of course, quite a bit has changed in the post-Covid world. However, the impact of the pandemic on urban development as well as the housing and lifestyle choices of families with children is yet to be fully borne out in the data.  In the 2021 Census, almost 11 million private homes were counted, an increase of about a million since 2016. Of these, 70 per cent were detached houses, 16 per cent were apartments and 13 per cent townhouses. Significantly, the data showed the proportion of apartments was still on the rise—accounting for about a third of the housing supply increase—while the proportion of detached housing was declining. Anecdotally, in the ensuing few years, there has been a steadily increasing number of development applications filed for medium-rise and high-rise residential tower schemes with larger apartments in major cities such as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Among them, First Quadrant Properties and capital partner Qualitas have started work on a five-building project approved for a 1.12ha site in Sydney’s Lower North Shore. Designed by Architecture Urbaneia, Willoughby Grounds will comprise a mix of 164 apartments including three and four-bedroom homes as well as a playground. It is due for completion in mid-2025 ▲ Renders of Willoughby Grounds, now under construction on Sydney’s Lower North Shore. Willoughby and its surrounds—an area predominantly occupied by detached family homes and few apartments—has been impacted by the NSW Government’s reforms to introduce medium-density multi-dwelling housing in low-density areas, which was announced in December. The planning strategy is part of a global trend to overcome urban sprawl with more compact—that is, more densely urbanised— cities. In Brisbane, plans were filed the last week of April for a 12-storey residential tower featuring family-sized apartments in one of the city’s middle-ring growth suburbs. It is earmarked for a 1890sq m amalgamated site at 8-12 Playfield Street, Chermside, about 10km north of the CBD and beside the giant Westfield Chermside shopping centre. Lodged by I Properties Pty Limited, an entity led by Sydney-based Rami Ayoub, the proposal comprises 62 apartments, including 40 three-bedroom and 20 four-bedroom units as well as 2 five-bedroom penthouses. The scheme has been designed by Angelo Nicolosi and Associates Architects “to attract a range of families seeking an alternative to detached/semi-detached dwelling”. “The development has specifically included larger three and four/five bedroom units,” a submitted planning report said. “The intent is to cater for a range of lifestyles (including larger families) and provide apartment living options within proximity to the Chermside Shopping Centre, the Prince Charles Hospital and public transport. “The unit mixture is intended to compete with residents that are typically used to owning a free-standing dwelling, delivering a range of larger dwelling types to cater to a range of families and people seeking more space.” The tower is to be crowned by a rooftop communal open space incorporating two pools, a barbecue and recreation area, artificial turf play areas and extensive landscaping. ▲ Renders of the apartment development proposed for Playfield Street, Chermside, in Brisbane. It is a good start. But according to research led by UNSW Sydney there is still a mismatch in layout preferences between developers building new apartments and the growing number of families with children who call them home. “This idea that apartments are not for families and are just for young working professionals is not true anymore, so we must build apartments for the diverse spectrum of people who live in them,” Professor Philip Oldfield, head of the University of New South Wales School of Built Environment says. “We know that good-quality, well-designed apartments can make excellent homes for families with children. “And while more families are making apartments their homes, too few are being designed with their needs in mind.” Studies have shown that Australian families living in apartments often struggle with poor sound-proofing, lack of storage, inflexible layouts, too few bedrooms, and absence of family-friendly communal spaces. The UNSW research used data from the Domain property website to analyse the spatial configurations of 368 apartments across three local government areas in Sydney. It found that one and two-bedroom apartments that appeal to investor-purchasers still dominate the market—making up 81 per cent of all new apartments available across the LGAs. And of all the apartments 55 per cent were centre-shared space types. That is, they had a layout without a hallway or corridor. “Generally, developers focus more on the number of bedrooms and location than on architectural design or room layout,” Oldfield, who co-authored the study, says. “They prefer generic, standardised apartment layouts that meet the minimum regulations because they’re cheaper to make and easier to sell, but that is fundamentally mismatched with what families want. “Designing good-quality apartments is one of the most fundamental things you can do to benefit society,” he says. “That means designing them for the needs of the people who live there, not just those who buy them.” Sophie-May Kerr, a researcher at UNSW City Futures Research Centre, says apartment designs too often exclude families, making it difficult for parents with children to consider them as long-term homes. Her research documents the challenges faced by families at the forefront of a demographic shift away from suburban living. “They recognise the benefits of the compact city such as walkability and proximity to services,” Kerr says. “But families living in apartments experience a variety of challenges that need to be addressed if the compact city is to be inclusive of diverse household types.” ▲ The shift from the Great Australian Dream of a detached home with a backyard is accelerating. Temlett agrees but also says the mindset of developers is shifting. “It’s a different product and price point,” he says. “It’s not the high-end multimillion-dollar apartments that you see being built for rightsizers or downsizers. “It has to be more liveable. They have t do larger rooms, more storage. They can’t do the investor grade stock of 10 to 15 years ago. “And I’m not saying that every family wants to live in apartments. It’s about providing more options and diversity. “But I do think the more better-built, family-friendly apartments that are actually delivered, the more families will actually see the value in living in them. “It’s a natural evolution of the apartment market.” You are currently experiencing The Urban Developer Plus (TUD+), our premium membership for property professionals. Click here to learn more.
