What led upsizer Ray Foo to buy an apartment at Hyecorp's Juliet in Roseville: Urban Buyer Q&A
Recent off the plan property purchaser Ray Foo has a strategy when he's buying apartments off the plan in Sydney.
"I'll always draw a five-minute walk radius around a development, to calculate its proximity to transport connections, mainly train or metro stations," Ray said.
"I do this from both an investment and liveability standpoint.
"My view is those developments that are well connected to the rest of Sydney will enjoy greater returns in both price growth and rental yield. I also look at the walk radius for when I live in the apartments, so I have an easy and convenient route into the city."
It was with this method, as well as extensive knowledge of the reputation of developer Hyecorp, that led Raymond to purchase a two-bedroom apartment in Juliet, Hyecorp's new apartment development in Roseville.
Comfortably falling into Ray's criteria, Juliet is located across the road from Roseville Station, a 25-minute commute into the Sydney CBD.
"You can't get a better location," Ray said.
"Not only are you across the road from the station, you're on the top of a hill and next to a park. It will be hard for another development to rival this location in Roseville."
Read more: Juliet: One of the most connected apartment developments in the leafy Roseville
The Juliet purchase represented an upsize for Ray, who bought his first property, also off the plan, a few years ago in his early 20s. That apartment was in Billbergia's Rhodes Central a few years ago, another well-connected development to transport near Rhodes Station.
Ray said off the plan gives much more flexibility for a first home buyer than a purchase in the established market.
"The percentage required for a deposit when buying off the plan allows first home buyers to avoid relying on the 'bank of mum and dad,' which is often necessary in the established market," Raymond explained.
"You pay a 10 percent deposit—an amount that is achievable to save up for. Instead of settling on the property in six weeks, as is common in the established market where you must pay the remaining 10 percent of the deposit, you have years to accumulate that money. While saving, you're not paying any progress payments or other fees, and your asset is often growing in value over that period."
It was 2016 when Hyecorp identified the prime Pacific Highway site, home to the Roseville RSL Club, as where they wanted to create not only a new apartment development, but rejuvenate the RSL which had been a fixture next to Memorial Park since the 1930s.
Hyecorp worked with both the Roseville community and local council to come up with Juliet, just 35 apartments that will sit above a redesigned ground floor club that will be more fine-dining than sticky floors with tired decor.
Juliet offers a point of difference in a suburb dominated by larger family homes, with very little supply of new apartments. Less than a third of housing in Roseville is apartments, and of those, only 30 per cent have more than two bedrooms.
Ray took part in Urban's Buyer Q&A series, which focuses on the driving factors behind buying off the plan property in Australia.
