Patrick
Like if you allow these commercial properties to have residential dwellings on top, creates extra job opportunities and extra spending in that actual commercial area as well. So you know, all of a sudden you might have, you know, Bernanke's Aukey's main main road area turns into another North Hobart restaurant strip showing one young.

Aaron
All right, guys, welcome back to the property part, your weekly engagement into real estate here in the Hobart marketplace. I'm your host as always, Aaron Horne, and it gives me great pleasure to be back at the desk with John McGregor and Patrick Berry. Real estate agents here at four wonderful property co. How are we boys?

Patrick
Glad to be back.

Aaron
Always good to be back. Looking sharp, J-Mac and Pat. I got to say that some new match that your weapon sure is. Tell us a little bit about that. I reppin these old schools. No, I want to play. Yeah, I want to play. What's going on?

Patrick
Oh, I thought, you know, we sell real estate. Why not sell?

Aaron
And I love this. Everyone wants.

John
To pay.

Speaker 2
For it.

Patrick
We actually have a new website going live in about a week, hopefully. And I've said it a few times, but we are at the end. We, as you maybe a guy.

Aaron
I actually think a day of release of this episode.

Patrick
Hopefully will be.

Aaron
Hopefully will be die release of the website. It's safe If you're listening to this jump on fire and for the year and fingers crossed to say something new, something sharp, something that's hasn't been done here, in the Hobart marketplace.

Patrick
Yeah, we've got a couple of really cool features that are exclusive only to the new website and hopefully be a bit of a game changer in Hobart. So I'm really excited for this site to go live.

John
Well, I'm just like the idea that it's actually information driven.

Patrick
Yeah, so we'll leave it as a little secret there for people. But in addition to that, we thought it'd be fun to add a merch promise.

Aaron
The new edition isn't that we're the only property company selling vintage. It is a bit better than that.

John
But with our own bobble dolls.

Speaker 2
And I'm like, Oh, please.

Patrick
Don't get me started.

Speaker 2
Selling private stuff.

Aaron
Now it would be very funny. Yeah. To be like, Oh, we've got this brand new thing for the marketplace because you can buy our stuff.

Speaker 2
Yeah, it might.

Aaron
Not. Look, we worked on making some cool stuff. You've even had the shoes that you had the shucks guy.

Patrick
Yeah, that's a good one for Nikes will be available for sale online.

Aaron
So yeah. So there's a thing and then I think we're planning on running a competition was the website opens when someone else can win a custom pair of Nikes and yeah.

Patrick
So we got that in the works as well. As a few exciting things coming up soon, which is going to be awesome.

Aaron
Plenty of planning happening here for and for probably, but don't worry about that. Yeah, actually, last week's episode was another absolute cracking. We've had some really good feedback on the last two. So yeah, we've really hit our straps for 20, 22. Everybody seems to be on board the property and having a great time. Last week we mentioned that we're gonna do a little follow up.

Aaron
We're actually letting and planned ahead. Today we're going to talk.

Speaker 2
Which is read. It's nice, everybody New Year, New us.

Patrick
Look at, look at this guy. We are just kicking goals.

Aaron
So yeah, tell us about today's plan. I'm going to talk about medium density builds and what benefits I could have to the community.

Patrick
And so obviously last week we were speaking quite heavily about ways to ease the housing pressure and options that are becoming available or sorry, they're not available. The proposed options of how we can help increase the density of housing and how we can create more opportunities for people to live in even a.

Aaron
Bit more affordable approach.

Patrick
And then by fluke, the Monarchy City Council actually put out a survey to all of the business owners in the in the municipality, and it sort of flowed quite nicely I thought. Yeah.

John
With the idea that because it was to have all the commercial spaces allow them to build up into residential. Was it right?

Patrick
Yeah, that's correct. So we talked about it on the show before that. We feel like instead of the classic urban sprawl where you've got to provide, you know, roads, services, sewerage, water, it's a lot better to do urban backfill where you feel property like build a unit in the backyard of another property. And so and allow that to happen in the, the denser areas.

Patrick
So around the Glenorchy CBD, the Moonah CBD areas where it's already got all the services required and can handle that extra work flow.

John
Absolutely.

Patrick
This yeah, this survey that's come out is sort of that one step extra. It talks about potentially creating, you know, additional residential dwellings over commercial buildings. So taking advantage of Main Road and that sort of transport corridor that is Main Road, Glenorchy, all the way through to Hobart.

John
Well, I think if you actually look at it, it's already happened in some buildings. So in the where L MacGregor, First National Office used to be at 83 main road, um, the, the bottom section was always built as a commercial space and upstairs was residential that actually had a bathroom, laundry, all that kind of stuff. We renovated out of it because we need it to serve differently.

John
And a lot of those buildings along that street all actually have a residential section already done.

Aaron
And so then I'm just thinking about using that as the example. If you look then behind the car park there a lot of the properties in that unit complex are behind it. There was the Salvation Army or there was a there was a place that's been knocked down recently that looks like that's going to be turned into apartment block with multistory apartments there.

Aaron
So I guess this proposal is saying like this is something we want to have available of, you know, people living on top of each other or using the space up rather than the space out. And then yet what do people think of this?

Patrick
I think it's great idea. Like at the moment, you know, we talk about Hobart growing and people trying to commute in and it's a painful sort of scenario to get into the city, want to create opportunities sort of in the outer suburbs. So, you know, you go knock your moon and you Bellerive where you can have higher density living in those areas.

Patrick
Absolutely. And then create them on corridors of transport so that they can get back into service the city. So, you know, building multistory apartment complexes in Bellerive where they can use the new ferry system to transfer into work each day. It just makes a lot more sense than trying to live in the suburbs where your only option is to drive 20 minutes into the city and then you go to where do you park, what do you do there and how do you.

Aaron
Just like the price of fuel at the moment, even just like kind of looking into that, that's a whole nother thing. I know speaking with a staff member here, they were saying, which is on the weekend, I actually just stayed in Norfolk because I didn't want to like have to drive and use up all my fuel. I was just one of those things where it was not worthwhile leaving because it's costing me over $2 a liter kind of thing.

Aaron
It's just insane to think like I actually reminded me back to remember back in the like high school days where someone.

Speaker 2
Gave me a lift to give me a lift to McDonalds. Well, I'll pay your petrol money. Yeah, that's coming back.

John
But we're all adults.

Aaron
Isn't it sad?

John
Yeah, yeah. Well, and what if you remember the conversation we had with Christie Johnson at the time and Aaron McGoldrick? We had them on the air.

Aaron
Talking about the Glenorchy City Plan.

Speaker 2
That's it.

Patrick
And she didn't actually, I wasn't invited to that conversation. Well.

Speaker 2
This year I thought we.

John
Were I caught up with them one on one because I've got a property in Barrie Street, which is that one road opposite Woolworths and the rugby voted.

Aaron
I don't think that'll be Woolworths.

Patrick
Not longer, much longer.

Aaron
Yeah, well.

John
There go as it is today.

Patrick
They're under stress and those values going down.

Speaker 2
On sale through.

John
They we had to get around because that that zoning is in a residential. Now most of the few of those properties on that street have a unit at the back. But we actually, we actually caught up with the idea of, you know, a tear that house down and you'd do like a three ten house structure for the exact same reason that they're talking about.

John
It's not going to be possible, unfortunately. Um, however, their vision was all those little individual houses would potentially change if you take all that then all those old council ones and you rebuild it into this sort of medium density element that we're talking about because it would obviously make the suburb look a lot more appealing in terms of its, you know, modern, modern feel.

John
And those particular houses don't really have any heritage relevance. So it's not like you drive past that and go, Oh, that's a beautiful throwback to old architecture. Um, and it also serves that element where it is on the transport corridor and you're getting, you know, sort of multiple dwellings into this same section rather than just one house yeah.

John
I guess in the center of Glenorchy.

Aaron
That seems to be the big one for me. Thinking about it is like we just need more dwellings for the more people like, as you say, like this is the first time there's ever been population increase in Tasmania. So yeah, the more people we need more dwellings, people are finding it hard to find rentals, etc. So I know this is a, it's a election year, so there's all these promises coming out like we could talk about the football stadium if you want, but like I heard another promise on the radio, you know, they promised there'd be 3000 homes built in this time, but that's going to triple to over 9000.

Aaron
So like, oh my God, like we're just going to keep building a building and building but is it just an empty promise that's never going to happen? Or I can. This is only survey. We're talking hypothetical. Oh yeah. It's, it's great to think that they're reaching out to businesses and saying, like, what do you guys think of this?

Aaron
Because it's something we'd like to look into.

Patrick
But it's flow in effect from there as well. Like, if you allow these commercial properties to have residential dwellings on top, creates extra job opportunities and extra spending in that actual commercial area as well. So, you know, all of a sudden you might have, you know, Glen or his main, main road area turns into another North Hobart restaurant strip where you've got little takeaway, extra coffee shops, things that people can come down in and utilize and spend money on in that suburb.

Aaron
Or even if you think of like the Elizabeth Street Mall, how that kind of used to be the central hub. If you come up now towards where that uni accommodation is, which is again medium density people leave each other and there's like a whole new little sub mini kind of, I don't know, like one fixed rate kind of thing.

Patrick
Amount of restaurants do exactly the same. Yeah, between the block up from the mall to where the uni accommodation is. Yes. Crazy. Yeah. There are so many new little takeaway restaurants, a little sit sitting dining restaurants, then coffee shops and just services and bars and restaurants like bars and clubs and stuff in that little area. Yeah, yeah.

Aaron
Not too crazy. Like I'd say three or four years ago walking through day there would have been like maybe three restaurants. Now it's like blown out to like 12 and they all seem to be doing quite well and all seems to be kind of this really happening space. So then yeah, it's kind of moving all the sprawl of that, moving out towards kind of get more businesses and more life in these other CBD days.

Aaron
You mean as equinoxes.

Patrick
And then you know, hopefully if you can build it up, you know, good old saying you build it, people will come. Yeah. And then from there you've got opportunities like farmer's markets or community or going to like things happening in a weekend to bring life into that space as well so that people can, you know, they may not have a backyard to enjoy, but we create enough things around it people can go to.

Patrick
It still creates that sense of community and that, you know, enjoyment of awakened.

John
And also to the less reliance on car transport because that's the big one. The I mean when we're when before strike a couple of odd restrictions even around the commercial spaces when the coffee shop that's next to it like the Czech leg was getting installed when the original applications were getting done, they said we need to provide something like ten to 15 car spaces.

John
Otherwise if you don't you have to pay like $30,000 per car space you can't provide. Yeah. Which is an insane rule. Like it didn't make any sense because it's a giant car park right at the back of it. So I hope in part of this review they look at a lot of these restrictions that they're placing on small businesses, even around car spacing and what you can can't do with the space.

John
They're just like a lot of those rules where how did you even come up with this concept? You know, the idea that a coffee shop that holds ten people needs 15 car spaces, like it's ridiculous. Yeah. So hopefully this is another you know, genesis to help obviously change a lot of those rules as well that allow a lot of businesses that are trying to get in to be more flexible.

John
And if you can have a building that has both commercial space, residential space, that really opens up the opportunity where people can fund that, invest in that and make it sustainable over the long term.

Aaron
I guess I'd never even thought about like it from the parking side of there, like it's all that other logistics stuff. But like just to be the cog in the or that thorn in the side, like what would happen? How would they deal with stuff like that?

Patrick
And if it were the parking aspect? Yeah, like, well, I think that's the beauty of having this high density is that parking then becomes less important.

Aaron
Yeah, yeah. But I guess I'm thinking of like you add 12 people up above this building leaving there, they still probably will have cars. Like where do they end up going exactly. Like I guess you've got to put in a car parking allocation.

John
Well, you know, an example, this is a, you know, one example was a client of ours in King Street when that when the Woolworths car park was developed at the side, what they ended up doing was that allocated one space to each of those houses on that little strip. Yeah, because obviously some of it was taken out. So within the actual commercial cost space is allocated to residential one for those houses.

John
Yeah. Yeah. That's not exactly a perfect solution, but it's damn hard problem to solve.

Aaron
Yeah. It's like, I guess like it's just a real time problem, as you were saying. What you're saying is like, oh, hold on a sec, there's a bit more to this than just being like, Oh, that sounds like a great idea. Obviously.

Speaker 2
Well, this is like.

Aaron
There's so much to it, but yeah, just, just has an idea we would like to, to address and talk about.

John
But I think the, the, I think we, I think we're all excited by the idea that rather than sitting there throwing out these giant subdivisions, that gives you a very small number of houses realistically compared to what we need I love the idea where you are converting the those centers right on the on the transport hub, utilizing those spaces way more effectively than just having that house sprawl again right in the center.

John
Yeah.

Patrick
Well, we're doing it here for one for the back car park that we've purchased. The house that was directly behind the office originally had one property on it. We pulled that down. We're putting three properties onto it as well as parking for the actual office itself. So we've repurposed, you know, a 900 square meter block of land and created parking opportunities for our team here at the office and housing and housing opportunities where we've had one family originally with a three bedroom house.

Patrick
Yes, we're doing we'll have nine bedrooms across three properties. Yeah. So all of a sudden we can, you know, house two more families in a, in a smaller, denser area.

Aaron
Which is saying you're going to move all your staff into the houses at the back and run a little sweatshop. Yeah.

Speaker 2
Yeah. No one's leaving. Yeah, that's it.

Patrick
You can have a child, which.

Aaron
Is seven.

Patrick
You get the day after you sell a house off your back to.

Aaron
It's funny talking about all this parking and stuff, because the one thing I know we discussed the this $750 million sports stadium proposal which seems like another really great election promise to kind of be like, yeah, we want to do this Devil's Den.

Patrick
I think it's gold, isn't it?

Aaron
Something like that. But it looks awesome. Looks amazing like but yeah, one of the things Wade said like oh is it from Park like it's a, it's a strange.

Patrick
Like it's yeah well this particular stadiums are 30,000 people stadium which is fine if you're a tourist in town because the beauty of the stadium being built in the center of Hobart is that you can fly in, stayed at a hotel, walk up to the stadium, yeah, perfect. But realistically how many people have 30,000 that go to the game are going to be interstate people.

Patrick
There's going to be a large chunk that are local where do they park, how do they get to the stadium.

Aaron
Bang. I did a lot of like the idea of building it out over the water a little bit and having the ferry system which seems to be running well.

Patrick
And talks about that in its proposal. So obviously, you know, the ability to come from the Eastern Shore across to the stadium, which is great, and obviously the ability to walk in from town, which is fantastic because there are a lot of car parks in town.

Aaron
But what about all those people out here and what about those train lines like these?

Patrick
Would I look talk about a perfect opportunity for that northern suburbs to come back you go straight past the stadium in question. Absolutely.

John
Yeah.

Aaron
But I feel like recently that was just given the big nicks and they just said, no way, that's never going to happen.

Patrick
I don't know why the height is higher.

Aaron
It's very bizarre. I think that. But I think one thing I heard was that was the cost of like fixing that up to it to be appropriate it's like we're going to try seven or 50 minutes all the.

Speaker 2
So yeah.

Patrick
Yeah, yeah. Seems like very good.

Aaron
I think I saw Kristy Johnston speaking of her. Previously on the show. Having a real kind of say, like, What the hell? Come on, guys like this could be spent way better.

Patrick
But if we wanted to have the AFL team, so it has to happen at our exactly.

Aaron
There's there's look there's kick on effects of something like that and I'm sure it would bring some great things to the state. But yeah, there are also lots of other I feel like a real wet sock on this episode. Yeah, I can't I've just been thrown, just been like, no, this seems like bad boys. Like, let's not do it.

Speaker 2
I'm all for.

Aaron
I'm all for Tassie. And it can go.

John
Yeah, but in the end where we're saying, look, we want more, we want more housing effectively for those that are wanting to get in here or those that are here and we look, we're just saying and we want better transport and we want more outstanding opportunities. We're not asking for much. Yeah, yeah.

John
But if you look in the end, like you said before, I like that one little question is like, Hey, have you thought about where everyone's going to park?

Patrick
And that's it. And I think with any survey flow on problems, I discovered that at least having the conversation now means that there's opportunities to fix these things. Yeah. And it's better to be having a conversation about opportunities like this than to bury your head in the sand and say, there is no solution. We need to build more subdivisions.

John
You just need to go.

Patrick
You need to live in Baghdad, you need to live it, you know, further out because that's the only option.

John
And one of my I was put up with a friend last night. She's in Sandy Bay and one of her neighbors, he's been in this house. It's like a three bedroom, big place he's been in there for years. He's built like so many of his fifties or something. Yeah. And he's been on he's going to really good rent and he's obviously he's just really frightened at any time that the owners are going to double it to market rent.

John
But at the same token, too, he's too stubborn to want to leave a three giant three bedroom home when he's on his own. So the the thing is, too, is he'd be he would fight tooth and nail not to have to sit there and relocate out to like a suburb, you know, way, way. Yeah, yeah. Place. He could be where because he's obviously supported by rental support and a bunch of other government measures.

John
But there's no way in hell would he ever want to be relocated out to an urban urban center. Sorry. A suburban thing where no services are.

Aaron
It's it's kind of like the thing we talked about last week with the home share and the people kind of once they sell it and they have to give their cut back to the government, it's it's really hard to put yourself out of the light. Your moral compass kind of gets a bit wonky when things like that happen.

Aaron
Like, I'm sure he's not sitting there thinking like, oh, man. Like, you know, I've got plenty of space for these other people that could come to everyone's kind of still looking out for themselves and.

Patrick
Yeah, well, I think the bigger problem you've got as well is that for people that have lived here their whole life, they feel like, you know it, Tasmanians losing what it is because there's so many people relocating from the mainland and being able to adjust to the new Tasmania is hard for some people.

John
That's fair, yeah. Is it like a sense of entitlement that we think we're owed? Yeah.

Patrick
We, we just, we've just lucky that we've enjoyed the lifestyle we have for the time we have. Unfortunately things change and look, there's so many different ways you can look at this and there's no right or wrong answer. I think the key takeaway is that a conversation has started and that's probably the most important thing.

John
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Hopefully they're obviously moving these in a way that hopefully is going to start commanding action there.

Aaron
Yeah, no, look, it's good. It's kind of just nice to have a freeform conversation about it then. Yeah. A quick prompt from an email last week. We've kind of sat on it and thought about it and thought about things, and it's just amazing that in this conversation I kind of went from one side of the coin to not the other, but just kind of like, Oh, that's something I hadn't thought of.

Aaron
So there's always other things to think about, and yet that's why they pay the smarter people to do that.

John
Not us.

Aaron
Press these buttons and, and act like I know what I'm talking about. But yeah, look, we appreciate everybody out there that listens to the property, but thank you for joining us every week. It's great to be back. We'll be back next week and yeah, we'll just see what happens next.

Patrick
Stabilizes.

Aaron
So yeah, we have been listening to the property but recorded and edited by 41 full media house in conjunction with four wonderful property code.

Patrick
This podcast is general information only and the thoughts of views expressed is the opinion of our panel and listeners should always seek the news, their own investigation into any topic we discuss to ensure they fully understand their own situation.

John
It does not constitute and should not be relied on as purchasing, selling financial or investment advice or recommendations expressed or implied, and it should not be used as an invitation to take up any attachment or investment services. No investment decision or activity should be undertaken on the basis of this information without first seeking qualified and professional advice.