00:00Right in the heart of Hornsby, hundreds of shops are bordered by main roads and train
00:07lines.
00:08And now 53-storey apartments, six times taller than its neighbours, can be built on top.
00:15It's an opportunity for the tenants or the people who might end up living in those homes.
00:20I've been trying to look at renting opportunities and it's just not working out.
00:24Everything is either too expensive or it doesn't work out.
00:26For the Centre Group, the location makes it a winning ticket in the state government's
00:30rezoning lottery.
00:32It has to be in places where there's good public transport available.
00:36If you can take advantage of those large swathes of land and build housing on top of them,
00:42then you're effectively reducing the land cost per dwelling.
00:46Locals are torn on whether it'll make housing more affordable.
00:50Everything's at your fingertips.
00:51You don't really need to leave the area.
00:53We're losing sight of all the things we used to have in this country and shoving 100 apartments
01:00on top of a shopping centre is not one of them.
01:03Centre Group hasn't submitted a development application yet, but one option would be to
01:08own the building long-term and rent the homes on five-year leases.
01:13Then it fulfils one of the most important requirements for the sort of build-to-rent
01:19model, which is trying to appeal to young adults.
01:23The company says it's reviewing its portfolio of 37 shopping centres across Australia.
01:29It's looking at where it can build apartment towers to help both the housing shortage and
01:33its bottom line.
01:35The company is trying to rezone Westfield East Gardens to develop build-to-rent apartments
01:41and student accommodation.
01:43At Westfield Parramatta, it has the green light to build 220-metre-tall commercial towers.
01:50But slumping demand due to remote work has it exploring apartments instead.
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