Pace Development Group - Quality Inner City Property Development

Cinderella Blossoms by the Bay – Mentone.                                                   The Age 1/5/10

Mentone, once the playground of the well-to- do is being rediscovered, writes Jenny Brown.  After being baptized as the bell of the bay or, in 1884 promotional literature. “the Riviera of the south” – a beach resort for the wealthy land boomers of one of  the worlds riches cities of the time – it has taken Mentone the best part of a century to emerge from the shadows of it’s more fashionable neighbors and rejoin the ranks of blue-chip bayside real estate.

The Cinderella suburb has certain streets on the beach-side, below Balcombe Road, that now compete with the pricier parts of Beaumaris, Black Rock and Sandringham.  “It is,” As Hodges Mentone agent Andrew Plousi says “amazing how Mentone has kicked on since 2007.”

Since Beaumaris priced itself beyond means of many who were ambitious to relocate, renovate or rebuild in the sunny south, houses in targeted streets within walking distance from Mentone shoreline have risen to the degree that even knockdowns can sell for $1 million-plus.

Mr. Plousi estimates that since the start of summer, the value-add in the top streets with single dwelling covenants – Sea Parade, Marina Road and Mundy Street – has been about 10% and “moving up and up.”

A five bedroom house with views in Mundy Street was valued at $1.7 million, a price boost being helped not only by local interest and competition from migrant British, South African and Russian bidders, (“half the bidders at auction have accents”) but all so by offshore buyers speedily securing portfolios of high-end Mentone residential.

Mr. Plousi had a client who flees in form China every three months to buy two or three properties he has assessed on the internet. “He flees in then flies out and buys the most expensive houses he can lay his hands on.”

Why wouldn’t Mentone hit the high time again? To the director of the Thomson Mentone Agency, Mark Pearman, it has everything. “Diversity, schools, superb public transport. It has a better beach than Beaumaris or Black Rock…and it has cosmopolitan variety. That’s what I love about Mentone.”

It has a quiet shopping village, with butchers, bankers, drapers and greengrocers, dominated by a village tower belonging to the 1887 Coffee Palace that is now Kilbreda College, one of four private schools in the area.  School children, both private and state, walk or ride their bikes. Others stream in from the station.  “The schools are a real draw card for the families,” Mr. Pearman says. “Traditionally, families move in for 15 to 20 years for schooling and then they just stay on in the area.” He is always amazed at the number of elderly people he meets. “So many 90-year-olds. The sea air seems to be good for them.”

Lloyd Brown, rising 90, and his wife, Marion, moved to Mentone 33 years ago and a few years back chose to hop from their island family house to a 1970’s unit on Beach Road with a view of the sea.  “It’s our patch,” Mr. Brown says. “The sea gives it an atmosphere that makes it feel like we were always on holidays, “It’s slow. Nobody is running and there are a lot of ‘gerries’ in Coles. It’s casual. People have got time: they smile at you. We have everything we want here and it’s like being on holidays all the time, it’s unique.”

The historic inheritance of Mentone’s original footprint keeps it quietly special. The wide streets of the first 1884 subdivision – “Well-laid streets that were curved to add variety and to follow the natural terrain of the sand dunes” – were named by a land boomer.  Matthew Davies, for Italian cities: Florence, Naples, Venice, Brindisi, Palermo and Milan.  The township which could be reached by rail since 1881 was named for an Italian resort and, until the bank crush of the 1980’s, Davies posh village did attract the worthies. The wealthy built boom-style towered mansions and Victorian weekend villas on big estates and the painters captured the beauty of the place. The Heidelherg School was first convened on the cliffs at Mentone.

Mr. Davies built the posh Coffee Palace, Charles Figgis designed the imposing 1899 beachside Mentone Hotel, which has its own sports ground.  Mentone also has movie houses, a skating rink and racetrack and until the 1920’s was quite the place to visit for a holiday or picnic.  With suburban infill occurring closer to Melbourne and with Beaumaris being carved out of the tea-trees  in the 1950s.

Mentone went into sleepy-hollow mode and much of its inherent aesthetic was subsequently damaged by the mass flat-and-villa building throughout the 1970s and 1980s.  Mr. Pearman estimates that as much as half of Mentone’s housing stock is villa units but even these are being priced beyond first home buyers, selling well into the mid-$500,000s. New townhouses can be brought from $600,000 to $800,000.  “Mentone is a very devise market and the (median) results mean it hasn’t been getting a lot of attention.” Mr. Pearman says. “In my opinion, although beachside is not far to being equal to Beaumaris, it is still undervalued.

“The question is, do people want to be kilometer closer to the city than Beaumaris and live with more trees but consistency of family housing? “Or do they want what Mentone offers, with is more schools, a better beach, better public transport and more individual housing? I still think it has a way to go.”