Opulent apartment complex Oxlade too expensive to replicate

With 15 private wine fridges sitting alongside a rooftop infinity pool and private garages for up to seven cars, the Oxlade apartment complex is too expensive to replicate.

The Oxlade New Farm. Picture: Scott Burrows

With 15 private wine fridges sitting alongside a rooftop infinity pool, private garages for up to seven cars and a water mall to help shield residents from the subtropical heat, the Oxlade apartment complex in Brisbane’s trendy New Farm is too expensive to replicate.

Veteran Queensland developer and richlister Kevin Seymour reckons the quality of the 30-unit project, coupled with the soaring cost of building materials and labour, means the Sunshine State capital may never see a project of this quality again – at least from his company.

For him, the only irritant is his decision to sell the 30 units at the outset. Seymour reckons he should have held off – now believing he would have made millions more on the apartments, designed by architects bureau^proberts – if he had held them back from the market, as prices rose and apartment shortages started biting.

The Oxlade New Farm. Picture: Scott Burrows

“I wish I had kept them all; I have left $30m sitting on the table by not withholding the project (from the market) and selling the units later,” says Seymour, who has developed many of Queensland’s iconic apartments over the past few decades.

“As such, I have made the people who bought their apartments in Oxlade very happy buyers.”

The Seymour Group has a long history of commercial and industrial development but also built the prestigious One Macquarie riverfront luxury residences in Teneriffe in 2007.

The Oxlade’s exclusive residences fronting 80 Oxlade Drive have been orientated to embrace stunning views of the river and parklands or to the CBD.

The Oxlade New Farm. Picture: Scott Burrows

Older buyers typically chose apartments with a riverside view. Younger buyers, particularly downsizers in their 50s and 60s, opted for a city view from the six-storey complex.

The cheapest unit sold for $1.5m and the most expensive, a large four-bedroom penthouse with a butler’s pantry and his and hers walk-in wardrobes, fetched $7.125m. All units have sold to owner occupiers, except for one, which is rented out for $3000 a week.

Most buyers hailed from Brisbane suburbs including Kedron, Bulimba and Hawthorne.

“We took the design inspiration from the Queensland Art Gallery – it’s like a Middle Eastern high-end six-star resort … given the height of the ceilings and the landscaping. Plus, there is a real sense of arrival,” says Seymour.

“It’s the most innovative design, and it has the best facilities – with things such as that magnificent rooftop pool and private wine room – with buyers having the opportunity to have their own private wine fridge. These are facilities no other development has in Brisbane. When people walk in, they look at the pool and across the city and the high-rise buildings – it almost feels like they’re right on the edge of the city.”

The units feature different types of stone, either calacatta or limestone, while three of the apartments sport private pools. Most buyers purchased a minimum of three-car lockable garages. Landscaping includes fiddle leaf figs, which were grown on site two years before construction started.

But Seymour laments the fact that building prices have increased so much in the past three years that, in his opinion, replicating Oxlade will be “economically impossible”.

“If you were building a new building with the same quality, it would cost a minimum 50 per cent more – you would have to charge buyers at least 50 per cent more on the purchase price.

“We will do more residential developments, but the construction market at the moment does not make any project viable. It doesn’t matter where you are, the cost of construction has risen so enormously, nothing is viable – it is the cost of both labour and materials.”