Hi All
I know the area, lived there 10 years and know the block this was built.
Why no lift.
Costs. would be $60k to $100k
Ongoing maintenance: say $5k to $10k a year.
Noisy and the lift motor room takes space.
Footing: heavy duty needed to support roof and you saw what was next door. SH is either sandstone or sand footings. Sandstone good but expensive to dig, sand bad, very bad to dig into. That area use to be an old swamp so probably sand. Very soft, lots of underpinning.
Why build there? Cheap by Surry Hills Standards.
Surry Hills is premium inner city suburb with present median price for a terrace of $980,000. Median is 2 bed upstairs, living dining an kitchen and small bathroom/ldy down. No carpark. M2 only 60m2 of land.
This block was landlocked by two terraces despite being the rear of the office precinct that borders SH and Central. This is not a nice area to live being the rear of 4 storey office with trucks etc...I suspect the owners of the terraces are the probably original residents who refuse to sell regardless of price, or brothels, hence the block has high height approval but too small for anything commercial. IF a developer could get the terrace next door and another they could make a decent block but it was corner so no go.
I dont know what he paid but built around 2000 a terrace would have been $350k in ok condition. I suspect he got land for $100 to $200k ish and probably found it after (as an architect) his firm was unable to get the neighbours to sell.
Another one similar but much nicer look was built in Devonshire St over a dis-used power stations. It sold for $400k and the got thee small units and a cafe onto park on GF. But this is main drag, not back alley.
Ironically small terrace blocks sell for more than house pro rata because they give the owner and excuse to do a "grand design".
UPSIDE?
Views
But they were all you had and not great like the harbour. At ground level you would be looking to the back of offices, seeing garbage bins, graffiti, homeless persons ( a few shelters are nearby) and it may smell and would be noisy.
He has
car parking. This is very rare in this area. Terraces worth $2M still have to park cars in the street. I know some who buy old unit nearby just for the carspace and rent unit out.
Up high you get decent air and views and away from all that.
Options. It would easily convert to offices long term for his own future firm. Financially not a bad call. You own and then sell to your firm when the kids come and move to Eastern Suburbs and let the firm pay you rent or a nice profit. Cannot imagine kids living there.
Large roof deck is also desirable being rare. Great for parties. No neighbours to complain being semi commercial area.
Showcase his talents Inner city couples have more money than sense and all want to put their mark on something. Overcapitalisation is never considered. Great advertising here.....
To give you an idea of how much they spend: I scored an antique claw foot bath, brass trombone taps and original doors from terrace for my new country house ebay for $500. Taps worth $1000 alone. I saved about $1500 for two days work.
Owners both doctors wit 2 kids were renovating out the back half of this single storey villa in Glebe. So they were demolishing half a nice house to build two more rooms, new kitchen and second bathroom. The budget $1.1M.
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That is on top of the house cost which would have been $1M itself. So over $2M for three bedroom villa, wall to wall one side, front garden 30m2 , rear garden and deck 60m2 and two more bedrooms and the house was perfectly good as is.
Some thoughts, Peter 14.7
