The coastal area southeast of Melbourne is providing a permanent escape as the pandemic endures.
5 min
It’s been anything but business as usual for the Mornington Peninsula, one of Australia’s blue-chip coastal regions, an hour southeast of Melbourne.
Against the backdrop of the global pandemic, rising unemployment, strict social distancing and economic fears, the prestige coastal community has offered homeowners a refuge and demand has seen it rise to become one of the country’s best performing areas.
Once the domain of wealthy second-home owners who decamped to their holiday properties over summer, it’s become a permanent hotspot with buyers across all price brackets trying to get a foothold in the area for the best part of six months.
Offering an appealing mix of diverse housing and an aspirational coastal lifestyle, the Mornington Peninsula is a comfortable commute to Melbourne’s Central Business District and has immediate access to restaurants, cafes, wineries and recreational activities.
Peninsula Sotheby’s International Realty managing director Robert Curtain described 2020 as being “a very different real estate market.”
“Every month since March 2020 has been a record month for us in terms of total sales value and volume,” he said.
There was no let-up in interest over Christmas and New Year’s holidays after a busier than expected trading period in the winter reduced stock levels ahead of summer.
Among several notable transactions in December, was the $5.5 million (US$4.26 million) sale of a two-bedroom house on 461 square meters of beachfront land on Mentor Road on Blanarring Beach and a home on Bowen Road in Sorrento that sold for more than A$4.5 million within 24 hours of hitting the market.
An architect-designed house on MacGregor Avenue in Portsea, which has a price guide of A$6.8 million to A$7.3 million, is typical of what discerning buyers are looking for in a luxury Peninsula property Mr. Curtain said.
Designed by Guildford Bell with five bedrooms and five bathrooms, it occupies a private 3,000-square-meter block in easy walking distance of the beach.
“High buyer demand and a lack of stock creates competition and ultimately strong sales results. This year we have seen very quick and sharp increases in property prices never seen before,” Mr Curtain said of the activity.
“The majority of buyers are either upgrading existing homes or making a longer-term commitment to buying on the peninsula. Without question the restrictions on travel has changed lifestyle options for many buyers,” he said.
Australia implemented international and national border control measures and physical distancing rules to reduce the spread of Covid-19 from March 2020.
Movement restrictions and social distancing requirements resulted in a ban on all in-person property inspections and auctions across the country.
Although Australia flattened the curve and lockdown restrictions eased in late May, a cluster of cases led to a second wave of infections in Victoria. A “state of disaster” was declared and Victoria faced severe restrictions including a nightly curfew, mandatory face coverings in public and the closure of schools and businesses between August and October. The Victorian Department for Health and Human Services reports more than four million Victorians have been tested for the virus since March with the state recording several days of zero new cases in early January.
Kay & Burton Portsea managing director Liz Jensen, who has sold property on the Mornington Peninsula for 35 years, said she was shocked at the demand that followed the lift in restrictions in October.
She said while the area was usually always busy in spring, she estimated inquiry levels increased three-fold once Victorians were allowed to move freely around their state again.
Big-Ticket Sales
The momentum of spring on the Mornington Peninsula has carried through to summer according to agents. More than 32,000 people have taken a shine to a listing for a home on Wild Coast Road in Portsea, making it one of Australia’s most viewed properties in January, according to online sales portal, realestate.com.au.
Several groups have conducted private inspections since it was listed the week prior to Christmas and an offer is imminent, said Ms Jensen, who is the listing agent for the property.
With a price guide of $8.8 million to $9.75 million, the eight-bedroom luxury home is embedded among the sand dunes and is not your “usual beach house,” Ms Jensen said.
Its indulgent resort-like feel has been designed to cater for large family gatherings or to be shared with groups of friends.
“There’s not much in these areas, it’s a thin market, so there’s always a level of buyers for properties of this calibre,” she said.
“Buyers are accelerating their plans, they’re not old enough to retire, but they’re choosing homes down here to live in permanently. We have people buying everything in every price bracket from $1.5 million to $10 million and everything in between.”
Buyers, she said, are looking with intention and showing a new appreciation for the established area.
“Over the last Covid year and going into this one, I find people to be very clear in their mind that they want to live a certain lifestyle that is more relaxing and less stressful,” she said.
“They want to enjoy themselves more and be able to share that with their family and friends. That works well down here,” she added.
A Strong Outlook for 2021
The trend hasn’t been lost on REA chief economist Nerida Conisbee, who picked the Mornington Peninsula as one of her top 2021 regional performers, based on its stellar results in 2020.
“Mainly because the region has seen the biggest jump in views per listing in Australia this year,” she said.
“The most popular suburb with house hunters is Blairgowrie where views per listing have more than doubled in 2020. It suggests buyer demand is accelerating while prices in Portsea jumped 20% last year to hit almost $2.4 million.”
However, Ms Conisbee expects Australia’s best-performing regional areas to be those that are closest to a capital city as movement returns and restrictions ease.
Regional Australia
The Australian Government’s $257 billion in direct economic stimulus to cushion the blow of the pandemic and the country’s record-low interest rate have helped support the property market but it’s the explosion of people shifting from capital cities that has had a dramatic impact on regional markets.
The spike in city-dwellers fleeing urban environments for a coast or country lifestyle meant regional house prices grew faster than metropolitan values for the first time in nearly 15 years.
Regional property values jumped 6.9% in the 12 months to December 2020 more than three times the 2% figures of the combined capital cities, CoreLogic revealed last week.
CoreLogic’s Asia Pacific Head of Research Tim Lawless said it was the first time during a rising market where regional markets had outpaced capital cities. Traditionally, regional areas outperformed capital cities during downturns.
“As remote working opportunities became more prevalent and demand for lifestyle properties and lower density housing options became more popular, regional areas of Australia saw housing market conditions surge,” Mr Lawless said.
It’s a movement not lost on the Mornington Peninsula, which appears to have its short-term future all but assured with January set to be another record month, according to Mr Curtain at Sotheby’s.
“The forecast for 2021, especially the first half, is likely to stay very strong as a lack of stock with more people using their homes than ever continues and cheap money provides further confidence for buyers,” he said. “But it’s a crazy world, so I’ll leave predicting the latter half of the year to those with a crystal ball.”
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What a quarter-million dollars gets you in the western capital.
Alexandre de Betak and his wife are focusing on their most personal project yet.
Ahead of the Games, a breakdown of the city’s most desirable places to live
7 min
PARIS —Paris has long been a byword for luxurious living. The traditional components of the upscale home, from parquet floors to elaborate mouldings, have their origins here. Yet settling down in just the right address in this low-rise, high-density city may be the greatest luxury of all.
Tradition reigns supreme in Paris real estate, where certain conditions seem set in stone—the western half of the city, on either side of the Seine, has long been more expensive than the east. But in the fashion world’s capital, parts of the housing market are also subject to shifting fads. In the trendy, hilly northeast, a roving cool factor can send prices in this year’s hip neighbourhood rising, while last year’s might seem like a sudden bargain.
This week, with the opening of the Olympic Games and the eyes of the world turned toward Paris, The Wall Street Journal looks at the most expensive and desirable areas in the City of Light.
Known for historic architecture, elegant apartment houses and bohemian street cred, the 6th Arrondissement is Paris’s answer to Manhattan’s West Village. Like its New York counterpart, the 6th’s starving-artist days are long behind it. But the charm that first wooed notable residents like Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre is still largely intact, attracting high-minded tourists and deep-pocketed homeowners who can afford its once-edgy, now serene atmosphere.
Le Breton George V Notaires, a Paris notary with an international clientele, says the 6th consistently holds the title of most expensive arrondissement among Paris’s 20 administrative districts, and 2023 was no exception. Last year, average home prices reached $1,428 a square foot—almost 30% higher than the Paris average of $1,100 a square foot.
According to Meilleurs Agents, the Paris real estate appraisal company, the 6th is also home to three of the city’s five most expensive streets. Rue de Furstemberg, a secluded loop between Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Seine, comes in on top, with average prices of $2,454 a square foot as of March 2024.
For more than two decades, Kyle Branum, a 51-year-old attorney, and Kimberly Branum, a 60-year-old retired CEO, have been regular visitors to Paris, opting for apartment rentals and ultimately an ownership interest in an apartment in the city’s 7th Arrondissement, a sedate Left Bank district known for its discreet atmosphere and plutocratic residents.
“The 7th was the only place we stayed,” says Kimberly, “but we spent most of our time in the 6th.”
In 2022, inspired by the strength of the dollar, the Branums decided to fulfil a longstanding dream of buying in Paris. Working with Paris Property Group, they opted for a 1,465-square-foot, three-bedroom in a building dating to the 17th century on a side street in the 6th Arrondissement. They paid $2.7 million for the unit and then spent just over $1 million on the renovation, working with Franco-American visual artist Monte Laster, who also does interiors.
The couple, who live in Santa Barbara, Calif., plan to spend about three months a year in Paris, hosting children and grandchildren, and cooking after forays to local food markets. Their new kitchen, which includes a French stove from luxury appliance brand Lacanche, is Kimberly’s favourite room, she says.
Another American, investor Ashley Maddox, 49, is also considering relocating.
In 2012, the longtime Paris resident bought a dingy, overstuffed 1,765-square-foot apartment in the 6th and started from scratch. She paid $2.5 million and undertook a gut renovation and building improvements for about $800,000. A centrepiece of the home now is the one-time salon, which was turned into an open-plan kitchen and dining area where Maddox and her three children tend to hang out, American-style. Just outside her door are some of the city’s best-known bakeries and cheesemongers, and she is a short walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Left Bank’s premier green space.
“A lot of the majesty of the city is accessible from here,” she says. “It’s so central, it’s bananas.” Now that two of her children are going away to school, she has listed the four-bedroom apartment with Varenne for $5 million.
Garrow Kedigian is moving up in the world of Parisian real estate by heading south of the Seine.
During the pandemic, the Canada-born, New York-based interior designer reassessed his life, he says, and decided “I’m not going to wait any longer to have a pied-à-terre in Paris.”
He originally selected a 1,130-square-foot one-bedroom in the trendy 9th Arrondissement, an up-and-coming Right Bank district just below Montmartre. But he soon realised it was too small for his extended stays, not to mention hosting guests from out of town.
After paying about $1.6 million in 2022 and then investing about $55,000 in new decor, he put the unit up for sale in early 2024 and went house-shopping a second time. He ended up in the Invalides quarter of the 7th Arrondissement in the shadow of one Paris’s signature monuments, the golden-domed Hôtel des Invalides, which dates to the 17th century and is fronted by a grand esplanade.
His new neighbourhood vies for Paris’s most expensive with the Notre-Dame quarter in the 4th Arrondissement, centred on a few islands in the Seine behind its namesake cathedral. According to Le Breton, home prices in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood were $1,818 a square foot in 2023, followed by $1,568 a square foot in Invalides.
After breaking even on his Right Bank one-bedroom, Kedigian paid $2.4 million for his new 1,450-square-foot two-bedroom in a late 19th-century building. It has southern exposures, rounded living-room windows and “gorgeous floors,” he says. Kedigian, who bought the new flat through Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank, plans to spend up to $435,000 on a renovation that will involve restoring the original 12-foot ceiling height in many of the rooms, as well as rescuing the ceilings’ elaborate stucco detailing. He expects to finish in 2025.
Over in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood, Belles demeures de France/Christie’s recently sold a 2,370-square-foot, four-bedroom home for close to the asking price of about $8.6 million, or about $3,630 a square foot. Listing agent Marie-Hélène Lundgreen says this places the unit near the very top of Paris luxury real estate, where prime homes typically sell between $2,530 and $4,040 a square foot.
The Boulevard Périphérique, the 22-mile ring road that surrounds Paris and its 20 arrondissements, was once a line in the sand for Parisians, who regarded the French capital’s numerous suburbs as something to drive through on their way to and from vacation. The past few decades have seen waves of gentrification beyond the city’s borders, upgrading humble or industrial districts to the north and east into prime residential areas. And it has turned Neuilly-sur-Seine, just northwest of the city, into a luxury compound of first resort.
In 2023, Neuilly’s average home price of $1,092 a square foot made the leafy, stately community Paris’s most expensive suburb.
Longtime residents, Alain and Michèle Bigio, decided this year is the right time to list their 7,730-square-foot, four-bedroom townhouse on a gated Neuilly street.
The couple, now in their mid 70s, completed the home in 1990, two years after they purchased a small parcel of garden from the owners next door for an undisclosed amount. Having relocated from a white-marble château outside Paris, the couple echoed their previous home by using white- and cream-coloured stone in the new four-story build. The Bigios, who will relocate just back over the border in the 16th Arrondissement, have listed the property with Emile Garcin Propriétés for $14.7 million.
The couple raised two adult children here and undertook upgrades in their empty-nester years—most recently, an indoor pool in the basement and a new elevator.
The cool, pale interiors give way to dark and sardonic images in the former staff’s quarters in the basement where Alain works on his hobby—surreal and satirical paintings, whose risqué content means that his wife prefers they stay downstairs. “I’m not a painter,” he says. “But I paint.”
French interior designer Julie Hamon is theatre royalty. Her grandfather was playwright Jean Anouilh, a giant of 20th-century French literature, and her sister is actress Gwendoline Hamon. The 52-year-old, who divides her time between Paris and the U.K., still remembers when the city’s 9th Arrondissement, where she and her husband bought their 1,885-square-foot duplex in 2017, was a place to have fun rather than put down roots. Now, the 9th is the place to do both.
The 9th, a largely 19th-century district, is Paris at its most urban. But what it lacks in parks and other green spaces, it makes up with nightlife and a bustling street life. Among Paris’s gentrifying districts, which have been transformed since 2000 from near-slums to the brink of luxury, the 9th has emerged as the clear winner. According to Le Breton, average 2023 home prices here were $1,062 a square foot, while its nearest competitors for the cool crown, the 10th and the 11th, have yet to break $1,011 a square foot.
A co-principal in the Bobo Design Studio, Hamon—whose gut renovation includes a dramatic skylight, a home cinema and air conditioning—still seems surprised at how far her arrondissement has come. “The 9th used to be well known for all the theatres, nightclubs and strip clubs,” she says. “But it was never a place where you wanted to live—now it’s the place to be.”
With their youngest child about to go to college, she and her husband, 52-year-old entrepreneur Guillaume Clignet, decided to list their Paris home for $3.45 million and live in London full-time. Propriétés Parisiennes/Sotheby’s is handling the listing, which has just gone into contract after about six months on the market.
The 9th’s music venues were a draw for 44-year-old American musician and piano dealer, Ronen Segev, who divides his time between Miami and a 1,725-square-foot, two-bedroom in the lower reaches of the arrondissement. Aided by Paris Property Group, Segev purchased the apartment at auction during the pandemic, sight unseen, for $1.69 million. He spent $270,000 on a renovation, knocking down a wall to make a larger salon suitable for home concerts.
During the Olympics, Segev is renting out the space for about $22,850 a week to attendees of the Games. Otherwise, he prefers longer-term sublets to visiting musicians for $32,700 a month.
Hidden in the hilly expanses of the 18th Arrondissement lies a legendary street that, for those in the know, is the city’s most exclusive address. Avenue Junot, a bucolic tree-lined lane, is a fairy-tale version of the city, separate from the gritty bustle that surrounds it.
Homes here rarely come up for sale, and, when they do, they tend to be off-market, or sold before they can be listed. Martine Kuperfis—whose Paris-based Junot Group real-estate company is named for the street—says the most expensive units here are penthouses with views over the whole of the city.
In 2021, her agency sold a 3,230-square-foot triplex apartment, with a 1,400-square-foot terrace, for $8.5 million. At about $2,630 a square foot, that is three times the current average price in the whole of the 18th.
Among its current Junot listings is a 1930s 1,220-square-foot townhouse on the avenue’s cobblestone extension, with an asking price of $2.8 million.
