As anyone who’s interested in real estate can attest, house styles have drastically changed over the years. From Victorians to Columbians to Bungalows to McMansions, Sydney has a good mix of traditional and modern homes throughout its many suburbs.
However, as a recent Tweet pointed out, many ultra-modern “cookie cutter” houses have popped up in Sydney, especially in Five Dock.
Many Twitter users responded; with most agreeing that this style of home is “ugly” and “hideous”. One user wrote, “No character. Not a fan,” while another said, “That’s not architecture. That’s just mass materials arranged with no imagination.”
Some Twitter users questioned why this house style is suddenly so popular and many replied with their various opinions, such as, “Cheap and easy for unimaginative cut and paste ‘architects’ and [sic] Selleys no skills tradies to build: a plague of bland” and “It’s from the generation of architects who grew up playing Minecraft.”
We spoke to Christian Leung, a licensed real estate agent and Director of Stone Real Estate Five Dock, and he gave his professional opinion as to why Sydney – especially Five Dock, located in the City of Canada Bay – is slowly becoming filled with these ultra-modern styles of houses. He says it’s simply because they’re fresh and contemporary.
“Specifically within [the] Canada Bay Council [area], when owners go to the extent of building a new home, they aim for a modern build to create something special for themselves where they can get clever with design space, flow and natural light.
They build a home that suits the modern family both inside and out; a natural evolution of architecture and aesthetics. [Plus,] it’s also often, these modern homes that set new sale record prices for the suburb.”
Leung also said that building this style of home from scratch can be much cheaper than trying to maintain a ‘traditional’ house.
“A portion of buyers who purchase a character home, try to keep the charm and characteristics of a gone-by era. They do an extensive renovation [but this] can often be as expensive, if not more expensive, than a complete knockdown rebuild.”
It seems that the majority of Twitter users must have different tastes than the many people opting to build this style of home; why else would there suddenly be so many? And as Leung pointed out, why else would they sell at record prices? Hmmm, perhaps this mystery will never be solved…
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