Mascot Tower apartment evacuation

https://www.smh.com.au/sydney-news/...nts-in-the-basement-area-20190614-p51xwt.html

Address: 1-5 Bourke Street, Mascot, NSW

Less than 6 months after the notorious Opal Tower evacuation last Christmas, another apartment building in Sydney has been caught unsafe.

To be honest I've been tinkering with the idea of living in a modern suburb such as Mascot or Green Square, but after reading this, I feel less sure.

 

I wouldn’t touch those suburbs with a ten foot pole. Concrete wastelands. You can live in apartments in better and more established areas nearby for not much more money. I can’t believe living next to an international airport is worth 700-800k+ for a unit and that people are willing to pay this too.

 

I invest exclusively in apartments - and would never touch these.

The newest property I have was built 1970s.

I prefer 50s/60s/70s walk ups to this kind of stuff in Mascot & Opal Towers.
Because;
- if they’ve been standing for ~50 years, any building issues should by now be apparent
- usually 6 / 8 in the block, a good share of the land underneath
- usually well located within the suburb - close to train, shops etc. 50 years ago they often had choice where to build when the suburb was developing
- like for like with new - these older properties tend to be bigger internally
- opportunity to value add through renovation, opportunity for premium price / capital growth if the site is acquired for redevelopment
- generally, they come without lifts, pools, gyms, which are expensive, strata rates more reasonable
- smaller blocks / smaller owners committee, easier to work with a small group of owners to improve the block
- they are the floor price in decent suburbs, with demand from FHBs, investors, and OOs.

 

I worked as a REA at Wahroonga for some years [1980's] and saw a lot of older units between Roseville and Wahroonga which were large and well built - would have happily lived in any of them.

 

@np999 you're not hearing about all of them

this is a building I have been working on in south western Sydney.

This office building was evacuated as a major support column was failing.

I have a few jobs like this at the moment.
(looks like i'm going to be busy in Sydney for the next 10 years or so)

 

This is just the beginning

 

Its about 30 steps down the road from my own Meriton apartment. Exciting times. Probably knocked $50k off my sale price if I had to sell today while people’s memories are fresh and Google search results for Mascot apartments being full of news articles.

A fellow resident on my strata committee was saying Meriton Towers had only 2 people on the strata committee, far too few for keeping affairs in order for a complex of that size.

 

Trishores aren't a good look for any building

 

This is because there are lots of groundworks, especially underground train lines.

 

Well, that's the new norms of modern living and investing.
Look at the Badgery Creek airport, lots of new property in that area has been appreciating at price and holds up very well in terms of price.

Airport attracts highly paid workers.

 

That certainly sounds a bit troubling, but at least it's not your building. So long as you don't intend to sell now and hold it for a 5+ years, things should work themselves out without too much adverse impact. Memories fade and people move on with their lives.

Despite this, I still like Mascot and surrounding suburbs such as Rosebery, Green Square. Mascot in particular, because of its convenient train station and numerous employment opportunities nearby.

I don't really buy the idea that a train line would necessarily cause trouble to an apartment building above it. Just look at North Sydney, St Leonards etc, all of them have high rise buildings over a train station, and no dramas like this.

It feels like an issue specific to this building in Mascot.

Fingers crossed those engineers can quickly identify the cause of the issues and fix them so all those affected residents can return home asap.

 

There is a large block of apartments being built not far from me and I have heard the builders approached the apartment block next door wanting to put stabilizers under their building - Strata refused permission. Makes you wonder about the one they are building ...

 

Now the big worry for out of all of this is if the same happens in a cheaper area. As I believe in the case of this mascot tower the owners will have to foot the bill for repairs as the building is older than 6 years, say this happens in the south west somewhere, if the strata cost to repair become too high a percentage of the value of the apartment will people just abandon? Or worse still just not repair and live in a dangerous building because owners can not afford repairs.

 

I think a dangerous building (as per Someguy’s description) would be condemned and people wouldn’t have any choice but to move out.

 

Do the building insurance is not covering all of the repairs cost?

 

And this is why all of our investment properties are older solid pre-1990's apartment buildings......

 

You would want to hope the rest of the form--work is not set like this one or in the lift wells..

 

The rock anchors are there to stabilise the existing block of units whilst the new one's basement is being excavated. The developer may take the strata to court for an easement for the rock anchors or alternatively lose large sections of the basement and redesign the footings to avoid the zone of influence below the adjacent building.

 

The new building is up to the 2nd floor well past the basement stage, my understanding was that the builders wanted to drill under the adjoining apartment. Second hand gossip so have to take with a grain of salt!