Harry Rescues Sydney Housing Crisis With Super Tall Residential Tower

At 89 years of age, multibillionaire developer Harry Triguboff has embarked on his most ambitious project to date, a trio of high rises worth a combined $1.3bn to include one of the nation’s tallest residential suburban towers.

In a show of faith for the Sydney housing market, Mr. Triguboff’s Meriton group plans to build more than 1000 apartments with the tallest tower, at 58 floors, expected to transform Macquarie Park’s skyline.

The three-tower Trilogy project will be built on Meriton’s 1.95ha Talavera Road holding purchased from the Goodman Group in 2017, and is being unveiled as Macquarie Park, 17km northwest of the CBD, shapes as Australia’s answer to Silicon Valley and leads the nation in the growth of office jobs.

Mr. Triguboff will himself retain at least one of the apartment towers as part of his massive build-to-rent portfolio.

The nation’s most successful apartment developer acknowledges that it’s a difficult time for developers and buyers.

“We’ve been through upheaval before and we are confident the market will rise again,” Mr. Triguboff said. “Building costs are surging and supply is tightening. There are less and less units being built and this is a consistent drop.

“When we sell an apartment, the price is fixed and can’t be lifted because of industry problems with costs and supply.

“We back our ability to deliver what we sell – we’ve completed every project we’ve started over the past 60 years.”

Meriton director of sales James Sialepis added that the benefit of purchasing off the plan from Meriton was that the apartment price is fixed as opposed to buying a house and land package where the buyer is dealing with the land seller and an external builder.

“Many buyers enter this market having to split contracts between the land seller and an external builder,” Mr. Sialepis said.

“Unfortunately when construction costs rise after you have committed to purchasing the land the overall price ends up much higher. Even if buyers were able to lock in a build contract early on, profit margins are now so slim that the builder is at risk of falling over by honouring the original price because costs have escalated quite a bit in a short space of time.”

The Trilogy buildings, which will also include 38 and 45-level towers, will sit on an island site beside Lane Cove National Park.

Construction will commence at once with the apartments to include some of the largest units at Macquarie Park, with many three-bed configurations and family-size four-bed “sky homes”.

The first to be released to the market, the 38-floor tower, will sport 191 apartments. Eighty per cent of these have views over the Lane Cove National Park to the north and the CBD to the east.

Trilogy residents will have access to a 3000sqm central podium garden with a barbecue pavilion, a children’s play space, a community garden, an outdoor fitness station and a rooftop deck.

The retail area will include restaurants, cafes and a 120-place childcare centre.

Meriton’s director of sales, James Sialepis, said Trilogy would deliver buildings of a height and calibre not seen previously in northern Sydney.

The Macquarie Park rental market is underpinned by Macquarie University, Macquarie Hospital and NSW’s second largest business district.

One bedders with no parking start from $670,000 while two bedders with one car park begin at $995,000. Four bedders with two car parks costs $2.1m.

Meriton expects to release two four-bed penthouses with rooftop terraces priced at around $3m in September.

Click here to learn more about Trilogy Macquarie Park