Defensive buying: How wealthy home owners protect their million-dollar views

Do some investors or developers sometimes buy property just to control the view?

“That’s not a surprising phenomenon at all,” says professor Nicole Gurran, a leading expert in urban and regional planning and housing policy at The University of Sydney.

“It’s always been a fact that wealthy people can purchase a view or an additional lot to make sure it’s preserved, but that’s why we have a planning system to make it fairer for everyone.

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“You can see that in a lot of Sydney. We now have much higher density, but in the prestige suburbs where richer people live, it’s much lower, as they’re keen to keep their views and sightlines and do everything they can to that end.

“They’ll often buy one property, then their neighbour’s too, to make sure of it.”

There are some who believe that free-market mechanisms like those would negate the very need for a planning system, if only a price could be put on every view.

A will pay B $100,000 in compensation if he agrees to being overshadowed by an extension, for instance. Or D values C’s view, which is going to be compromised by an addition, as worth a $1 million payout, Gurran suggests.

“But it becomes a very uncertain way of managing a city, and the fact is that some things are too important to be left to the market,” she says. “The whole community benefits from good planning rules that preserve values.”

Certainly, airspace, sightlines and the quiet power of what can’t be built are critical, and developers and businesses have been known to buy properties and land to block further development.

Woodhill Property’s Peter Chittenden, who has spent 35 years in the residential development sector, cites the case of Westfield, which, he claims, buys numerous lots around its properties under many different names so it can amalgamate sites and preserve sightlines.

“That’s especially with the new laws around strata that promote density,” Chittenden says, quoting the $270 million lawsuit between Grocon and Lendlease over views from their apartment towers at Barangaroo. “People certainly have to do their homework when buying a home with a view to making sure it won’t be built out. But it is difficult.

“People find it much easier to look at a photo of a view than to read a contract about what might happen to that view. They don’t realise that such a picture really doesn’t matter; it’s about the contract. And rules change, and councils can’t guarantee views will be forever.”

In Victoria, buyers’ agent Cate Bakos, who is chair of Property Investment Professionals of Australia, knows of a number of occasions where “defensive purchases” have been made to lock in access to vistas.

“People, usually high-net-worth individuals, will buy a property or a piece of land to either protect a view or maximise their view,” she says. “It might be about prohibiting a neighbour from building next door and taking out their vista, or changing the streetscape.

“We’ve had this happen for coastal properties on the Mornington Peninsula, on the Surf Coast and in Brighton, where someone doesn’t want people building next door to either take out a view or give them a view they don’t want – like of a blank wall.

“But it can be colossally expensive – especially when buying a property you’re not inhabiting.”