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This is the nation’s most expensive apartment

ABC

ABC

A Chinese businessman has purchased Australia’s most expensive apartment for $25 million at the yet to be built Australia 108 tower in Melbourne.

The 800 square metre penthouse will take up the entire top level of what will be Melbourne’s tallest building when it is completed in 2019.

CBRE Residential Projects Victoria managing director Andrew Leoncelli said the developer of the building had doubted a buyer could be found.

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“We fought very hard to include it. We believed there had to be a buyer for it as an expensive trophy for a very well-heeled international businessperson, and that’s what’s happened,” he said

Mr Leoncelli said the sale was significant and showed that Melbourne’s apartment market had matured and was affordable when compared with Sydney.

“Twenty-five million’s a lot of money but for 800 square metres it’s very reasonable value for money,” he said.

australia's most expensive apartment

The kitchen inside the penthouse. Photo: ABC

The tower is one of a number of high rise buildings approved for construction in the inner-city suburb of Southbank by the previous Victorian Coalition government.

An earlier incarnation of Australia 108 at a height of 388 metres had to be redesigned, after it was deemed to obstruct an emergency flight path route to Essendon Airport.

Mr Leoncelli said the buyer was a “very private and extremely wealthy” Chinese national with a family who spends time in New York, London and various parts of China as well as Melbourne, where he spends roughly three months of the year.

The buyer worked with designers to customise the apartment, which has a few unique features, he said.

It will have its own glass lift, which will take you from level 98 to the penthouse at level 100, as well as an “incredibly dramatic” three-storey staircase and inside, an enormous kitchen.

But Mr Leoncelli said the most impressive feature would be the private rooftop courtyard, which would look like a rectangular glass box within the living area.

“It will be directly open to the moon and the stars, the rain and the sun. So he can sit outdoors 320 metres up, in a very calm, windless environment,” he said.

Fifty-five apartments in the Australian 108 building are yet to be sold, two months after they went on sale.

Melbourne City Council planner Leanne Hodyl criticised development plans for a nearby Southbank block in a report published as part of a Churchill Fellowship in February.

“There was general consensus that the building densities … and urban form shown in this block were unsupportable,” the report said.

“There was frequently genuine surprise that Melbourne’s policies enable developments of this density to be built.”

The report quoted University of British Columbia urban design professor Scot Hein as saying that the Southbank development model was a “mistake”.

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