It’s the Vibe: Sydney apartment boom back as sales top $140m in just hours

The top end apartment market is roaring back to life with a hotel conversion project in Sydney’s Rushcutters Bay smashing sales records.

The Nautique project in Rushcutters Bay, Sydney. Source: Supplied

The luxury apartment market is roaring back to life with an opulent project in Sydney’s Rushcutters Bay generating $140m worth of sales in just a few hours.

The jump in sales has echoes of the last city apartment boom when units rapidly sold out within days but this time locals are dominating the action.

The latest project is the conversion of the former Vibe Hotel on the site which sits near Sydney Harbour but it is only one of a flood of planned redevelopment around the harbour.

Cashed up buyers who have sold mansions into the hot home market make up a big proportion of purchasers as do buyers looking to get set early in the apartment upswing.

In a sign of the times one three bedroom apartment over 155 square metres was snapped up for $9m, ahead of initial expectations.

The former Vibe Hotel in Rushcutters Bay, Sydney.

The sales success is a big win for JDH Capital, which is also redeveloping the Sirius Building at Circular Quay, where it has also smashed sales records.

The project’s success is being replicated across Sydney’s wealthy eastern suburbs, with more developers buying up a site in order to capitalise on the boom.

A boutique developer set an Australian coastal record with the purchase of an old apartment block that sits next to designer mansions on the Tamarama oceanfront for $29.2m.

The block of five units was sold by Raymond Hodder who had owned it for more than 30 years ahead of auction, via William Manning of McGrath with Clint Ballard of Ballard Property.

Developer Top Spring Australia in September splashed out $94m for a prime site in Sydney’s Double Bay for $94m that was sold by the Rose family, which worked up a proposal for a $300m mixed scheme designed by renowned architect Luigi Rosselli.

A month earlier, Melbourne-based developer Fridcorp joined with Piety Group to buy the Intercontinental Hotel in Double Bay from Chinese company Shanghai United for about $178m, and it could remake it as a Louis Vuitton-branded project.

JDH Capital bought the former Vibe Hotel site in Sydney’s Rushcutters Bay for $125m mid year and has moved to quickly capitalise on the buoyant mood with the launch of its luxury 123-unit Nautique development.

Fronting both the harbour, plush Darling Point and Rushcutters Bay Park, the $300m Nautique apartment development will be positioned as the gateway to Sydney’s eastern suburbs, and is the brainchild of the same ­developer behind the controversial redevelopment of the Sirius building in the historic The Rocks precinct closer to the CBD.

The since-closed Vibe Hotel was owned by RHS Hotel Investments, a syndicate of Greg Shand’s Barana Group and Toga, which a decade ago toyed with plans to spend about $39m turning the hotel into apartments. The syndicate picked up the former Rushcutters Harbourside Hotel for $42.75m in 2003.