Property sales are snowballing at Mt Buller ski resort

The popular Victorian winter holiday destination has recorded more than $78m in property sales in the past 13 months.

Whitehorse Chalets at Mount Buller.

The owners of Mt Buller ski resort, Melbourne’s Grollo family, are expected to start subdividing land for chalet development in the fast-growing Victorian alpine winter holiday destination, where in one record deal a buyer spent $7.4m on a nine-bedroom apartment.

More than $78m worth of apartments and freestanding chalets have sold at Mt Buller in the past 13 months through agent John Castran of Castran, and he attributes many of the sales to COVID-19 as Melbourne identities and other wealthy individuals choose to buy a bolthole in the skifields rather than a far-flung plan of holidaying in Europe or the US.

“A lot of this is COVID-19 — people are saying they can’t go anywhere else,” Mr Castran said.

Because of the virus, many ­buyers are favouring studios and smaller apartments over larger properties.

“With COVID-19, they want apartments for only two people for fear of the spread of the virus in larger apartments with more guests,” he said.

Mr Castran said the $78m worth of sales he had achieved at Mt Buller represented more sales than had been negotiated at the Victorian resorts of Falls Creek and Mt Hotham and the NSW resort of Thredbo combined in the past five years.

“The difference between Mt Hotham, Falls Creek and Thredbo is the owners of those skifields do not do real estate development there,” Mr Castran said.

“As a consequence, the Grollo family at Mt Buller is developing there — that is why there have been jaw-dropping transactions at Mt Buller.”

The next stage of sales will see the release of $23m worth of sites in Mt Buller as part of the upmarket Whitehorse development.

Blocks of about 220sq m will be offered for between $800,000 and $1.2m, with buyers having the ­option of developing one, two, three or four-bedroom freestanding cabins. The sites will be sold with plans attached for the designated designs.

Most of Mt Buller’s buyers hail from Victoria’s cashed-up Port­sea, Sorrento and Flinders areas, as well as Red Hill in the hinterland of the Mornington Peninsula, with skiing finding favour with families amid the pandemic.

“With Mt Buller you can drive there in three hours. There is no ski resort in Australia which is as close to a city of five million people,” Mr Castran said.

About $38m worth of apartments have sold at the Grollo-­developed mixed-use Kooroora project, which under the lease agreement allows people to live there full time and bring their pets, subject to the approval of the owners corporation.

The Kooroora complex at Mount Buller.

The largest sale in the 21-unit Kooroora complex, which has just been completed, was struck at $7.4m and included extra car spaces along with the 600sq m apartment, which sold to a wealthy Melbourne buyer.

Smaller 47sq m units in the complex ­have sold for about $280,000 each.

The next release of apartments will be available in the Kooroora Hotel Apartments complex, with 24 units on offer sized from 47sq m to 60sq m.

Mr Castran said the apartments would be sold with or without a four-year rental agreement guaranteeing 5.5 per cent net returns in place.

Prices start at between $395,000 and $550,000.

An interior of an apartment at Kooroora, in Village Square, Mount Buller.

Mr Castran said he also had sold about $10m worth of apartments in the Mt Buller Chalet Hotel during the past 12 months. ­Originally developed 28 years ago, they recently have been renovated by the Grollos.

At the ultra premium end of the market, at Mt Buller’s Whitehorse development, $30m worth of apartments and chalets have been sold in the past 12 months. “We sold $5m worth in the last month,” Mr Castran said.

Explaining the surge in buying of late, Mr Castran said large ­numbers of business people had been self-isolating in Mt Buller because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unlike in NSW, Mr Castran said, about 95 per cent of the sales were cash purchases with no ­finance involved.

Meanwhile, Grollo Group director of alpine development Martin Ansell said heavy infrastructure investments were being made in snow-making equipment and there was a pipeline for more development at Kooroora and Whitehorse. A new dam increasing water capacity to the 24-lift Mt Buller resort has just been completed.

Mr Ansell said the Grollos had invested more than $20m in snow-making infrastructure during the past few years. Last year, a new $8m lift was installed.