How to buy into Bondi for $96, one brick at a time

THE company selling apartments by the brick is offering Australians the chance to buy a pad in Bondi. It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?

A slice of this for $96: Iconic Bondi Beach. Picture: Daman Shaw

AN investment company is offering the chance to dip your toes into the Bondi property market for $96.

And it really is a dip.

The $96 will get you a brick in a two-bedroom flat in Ramsgate Avenue ... along with up to 9,999 others.

And it’s a rental, so dropping in for a shower to wash the sand and salt off after a swim isn’t an option.

The Bondi Beach pad is the latest investment for newbie company BrickX, whose expansion into the iconic 2026 postcode brings its property portfolio to six.

The BrickX investment scheme, publicly launched two months ago, “sells” houses — a brick at a time — in a scheme it billed as a “stock exchange” for residential property.

Boutique buy: The exterior of the Ramsgate Avenue apartment block. Picture: Supplied

Investors buy single “bricks” under a system called “fractional ownership”. Each property is divided into 10,000 bricks.

You can buy and sell bricks whenever they like, and can own up to a maximum of five per cent of any single property’s bricks. In Bondi, that gets you up 500 bricks in a renovated ground-floor two-bedder in a small Art Deco building block of four, with a sunroom, floorboards, shared garden courtyard and a broad, steady supply of prospective tenants.

Beach pad: The kitchen and living area. Picture: Supplied

BrickX CEO Anthony Millet says Bondi hasn’t been chosen for its iconic status, but because property experts who select the company’s properties believe it makes good sense. Bondi isn’t forecast to be a victim of dire apartment oversupply warnings being forecast in Melbourne, Brisbane and other areas of Sydney.

“We look at suburbs that have consistently high tenancy demands, scarcity of stock for rent and buying a limited opportunity for over-development, in Bondi there’s not much you can develop in meaningful way,” he said.

Two months in, BrickX has grown from 100 investors at launch to 1400, with half of those.

buyers coming from the hopeful first-home buyers category, Mr Millet said.

And it is a frustration with spiralling property prices that has seen investors turn to the “fractional ownership” market, Mr Millet said.

“Frustration is a common theme from those who want to invest, and either don’t have enough cash, or are looking for an alternative to traipsing round open houses with so many others, and missing out,” he said.

“First homebuyers are 50 per cent of our investors., but there are also people who own their own homes and want to invest a smaller amount without buying the whole thing, and divest in an easier way than owning an entire property.”

The unit’s shared courtyard. Picture: Supplied

Originally published as How to buy into Bondi for $96, one brick at a time