Uber accessory: Hermes Birkin bag is top choice of world’s ultra-rich

Knight Frank’s The Wealth Report 2025 tracks 10 collectibles sectors as measured by the Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index (KFLII), and in the past year, the rate of growth fell by 3.3 per cent.

This has left collectors and investors to navigate a changing landscape where scarcity no longer guarantees returns.

The report shows handbags were the best-performing luxury asset class in 2024, although prices rose marginally at 2.8 per cent.

“The ultimate classic handbag, the Hermes Birkin in black Togo leather, is now more valuable than ever when sold on the secondary market,” the report said. It resells online at $48,645 for the real thing.

The weakest sectors were fine art, wine and whisky. Art was down 18.3 per cent, with the market seeing a total reversal from the double-digit growth of 2023 and a worse performance than during the COVID-19 crisis when values fell 17 per cent.

Demand for fine wine also fell, with prices down by 9.1 per cent.

Engine yard

Warehouse giant Goodman Group has shifted focus to retail at its large-scale Rosebery Engine Yards development in Sydney’s south, a 1.9-hectare industrial property once home to a range of manufacturers, including Westinghouse.

Goodman has transformed the 100-year-old site at 115– 151 Dunning Avenue Rosebery into a fashionable lifestyle destination featuring retail, dining, childcare and commercial offices.

Originally built between 1922 and 1925, the former factory housed Buzacott & Co’s Rosebery Engine Works, the Commonwealth Weaving Mills, and Westinghouse.

Kaftan queen Camilla is the latest to sign up at the mixed-use lifestyle precinct, which also has premium fashion brands Scanlan and Theodore, Zimmermann, Rebecca Vallance, Aje, Camilla and Marc, Viktoria & Woods and MJ Bale, along with Oroton and July Luggage.

Lune Croissanterie opened its flagship store over the summer, adding to the food mix such as Gelato Messina. There is only one more site to be leased out of the total 11,500 square metres.

The first stage was designed by Group GSA in collaboration with Goodman and opened in July 2024.

Uni expands

UNSW has extended its footprint in Sydney’s east with the purchase of a site that will house students for an estimated price of $80 million.

The 2410 sq m at 159–171 Anzac Parade & 1 Lorne Avenue has 7884 sq m of space to lease on average term of 13.5 years.

The sale was brokered by David Curtis, Louise Burke, and Raphael Sebban of Cushman & Wakefield in conjunction with JLL’s James Barber, Luke Billiau, Jack Bergin, and Andrew Rojek, with interest from both domestic and offshore investors.

In the city at 400 Kent Street, the Singaporean investment house Cambridge JMD Investment has picked up a Sydney office tower, home to Central Queensland University, in a $111.58 million deal.

The buyer will hold 400 Kent Street in an education real estate fund it has established. The sale was advised by RB Property’s Richard Butler and Stanton Hillier Parker’s Steve Tsang.

Line in the park

Despite concerns of office sector malaise, Investa, along with co-owners Oxford Properties Group and Mitsubishi Estate Asia have opened Sydney’s latest commercial office and retail project, the $1.3 billion Parkline Place at 252 Pitt Street.

NSW Government, Insignia Financial, BDO Australia, and Foster + Partners all call the tower home, which sits on the corner of Pitt and Park streets and is interconnected to Gadigal metro station.

Parkline Place was one of two unified public transport over-station developments and was procured as part of the NSW government’s Sydney Metro City & Southwest Project.

Further south on Pitt Street, the CBD’s first purpose-built Build to Rent (BTR) tower, Indi Sydney, owned by Oxford and developed and managed by Investa, opened late last year.