First published 16 Nov 2026, 5:00am
Il Oh, Jimin Kim and their three-year-old son Sean are using the downturn to upgrade
A Park Ridge family of three is using a “win-win-win” real estate strategy to their advantage, using Brisbane’s property downturn to upgrade their lifestyle.
While the city’s property boom is cooling fast, Hotspotting managing director Tim Graham said the unit market still holds opportunity in today’s troubled economic climate.
“Units are what we call the win-win-win scenario,” Mr Graham said.
“You’ve got affordability being the first win … you’re getting higher rental yields … and the third one, which is not something that people believed would be possible for many decades, is that we can now get better growth in units than you can in houses.”
The family has bought into a development in Rochedale
For Jimin Kim, Il Oh, and their three-year-old son Sean, the decision to buy an apartment in Rochedale allowed them to keep their existing house as a rental investment.
With Hotspotting’s National Thermometer Index showing the Rochedale area cooling into a buyer-friendly Neutral zone, the family secured a property off-the-plan in Florian Rise, a 188-apartment development in the established Arise masterplanned community.
“When Il first suggested Florian Rise, I hesitated because we’d lived in apartments before and I wasn’t sure it would suit our young family,” Ms Kim said.
“But the size of the apartments is so much larger than anywhere we’d lived, and we realised we could have the space we wanted without the upkeep of a house.”
They are looking forward to a low-maintenance lifestyle
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For Mr Oh, a FIFO welding subcontractor in the energy sector, the shift to a unit was driven by a desire to reclaim family time when he is back in Brisbane.
“We started thinking about how much of our weekends go into maintaining a house, when we’d rather spend that time together as a family, so the low-maintenance apartment lifestyle is very appealing,” Mr Oh said.
“Having 24/7 CCTV security and a gated community gives us real peace of mind.”
Total Property Group managing director Adrian Parsons said the couple’s decision reflected a broader shift in Brisbane’s property market, as families reassessed the traditional Australian dream.
Marketing agent Adrian Parsons said families were reassessing the traditional Australian dream
“The level of owner-occupier demand we are seeing shows there is a strong market for well-designed apartments in established Brisbane suburbs when they deliver the space, amenity and lifestyle buyers would otherwise expect from a traditional home,” Mr Parsons said.
The first stage of the project is due for completion in late 2027.
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