Don Fini is hoping Fremantle’s Nightingale project drums up more interest in the model in WA.
Don Fini says an event in Melbourne nearly a decade ago set him on a path to creating Western Australia’s first Nightingale apartment development.
The director of Fini Sustainability told Business News his first encounter with the Nightingale model was at an Australian Institute of Architects annual conference in the Victorian capital in 2014.
At that point, Nightingale Housing was a newly formed entity.
A pilot project in Brunswick that acted as a precursor to Nightingale, The Commons, was newly complete.
Mr Fini, who doubles as Nightingale Fremantle development and project manager, said the focus on people over profit drew him to the approach.
“What I liked about it … [is that] … thinking about the people living there was more important than the return on the project,” he said.
“When I came back to Perth from Melbourne, I started talking to architects about [doing it in WA].”
The Nightingale Housing initiative started after Melbourne sustainable architecture firm Breathe bought a site in Brunswick in 2007, with a view to developing an apartment project that coupled affordability with sustainability.
The GFC hindered the economic viability of the project, The Commons, which was eventually taken over by ethical developers Small Giants and completed in 2013.
Nightingale apartments depart from conventional approaches to development by adhering to a triplebottom-line approach that values social, financial and environmental sustainability.
The architect-led housing model is not-for-profit, which means the apartments are priced without significant profit margins.
Since 2014, 14 Nightingale apartment projects have been built in Victoria, South Australia and WA, encompassing 411 dwellings.
A further 254 dwellings are under construction and 500 in planning across 17 projects in Victoria, NSW and South Australia.
Nightingale Fremantle utilises solar passive design.
Local approach
WA’s first Nightingale apartment development, Nightingale Fremantle, was the most recent of these projects, reaching practical completion earlier this month.
Speaking to Business News about the project as the finishing touches were put on the build, Mr Fini described the process as a learning curve.
“It is [about] working out how successful it will be in WA, and I don’t know … it’s all dependent on the people who will be living here and their stories,” he said.
“The other thing is to get people thinking that sustainability is very important in how you build things.
“If you build a more sustainable building, you’re reducing people’s living costs … that’s going to be the interesting thing here: how often are they going to use air-conditioners, how well the double glazing works.
“It’s going to be a learning curve … and I know all the buyers will actually tell us [if] it works well or doesn’t.”
Nightingale Fremantle, a $9 million development comprising 15 apartments and two ground floor commercial tenancies, was approved by The City of Fremantle in 2018.
Local architecture firm Edho was licensed to deliver the development, which took longer than expected to get off the ground.
While Nightingale apartments in Melbourne are sold via a ballot system, where people who struggle to access secure housing are prioritised, Fremantle’s project was not met with the same level of demand.
“It was difficult … the market was depressed, sales weren’t great, so we had to work out how we fund the building work,” Mr Fini said.
“We did get a mortgage from the bank, but we had to have a certain value of work done before their mortgage would come into place, so I personally raised some money to get the project started.
“If you’ve got a project under construction, then your sales will improve, because it’s actually getting built. Trying to sell fully off the plan before you start work on site is always difficult.”
Mr Fini and Victoria Cole provided $2.8 million to fund the build, while a group of passive investors spent $1.5 million on acquisition and consultant fees.
He said the business model differed from conventional builds due to its focus on sustainability over profit, though the development did generate some returns for investors.
“There’s not a guaranteed return, it usually works on eight per cent per annum, whereas a developer would get fifteen to twenty per cent return on the total cost of their development,” Mr Fini said.
“It’s very different thinking; the profit is not what it’s about.”
As the project reached completion, 13 of the 15 apartments were sold.
He said a Nightingale project could cost the same as a conventional project but profits in the former were affected by the sustainability measures.
“Nightingale looks at affordability over the life of living there,” Mr Fini said.
“The apartments aren’t affordable in the sense of being cheap because the level of sustainability that’s put into the project, but it reduces the cost of living there and by doing so it reduces your mortgage risk.
“That’s the difference in the thinking; they’re not meant to be cheap houses, because you can’t do a high level of sustainability in a cheap way.”
Residents started moving into Nightingale Fremantle in March.
Environmental factors
Nightingale Fremantle’s apartments have an average nine-star Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) rating, well above the national average of 6.2 stars.
Mr Fini explained that this was achieved through solar-passive design, which reduced the need for external heating and cooling systems.
The building is north facing, meaning it minimises sun exposure in summer and maximises it in winter. It also features insulation, double-glazed windows, cross ventilation and solar panels, and is fully electrified (no gas).
“The goal is to be fossil fuel free,” Mr Fini said.
He said it was difficult in WA to buy green electricity, but that should shift in the future.
Mr Fini emphasised the importance of addressing the impacts of climate change now, rather than waiting for rules to be enforced.
“We have to start being very serious about sustainability if we believe in climate change, because if we leave the changes too late we will not achieve anything,” he said.
Nightingale Fremantle has one car space per apartment and electric vehicle chargers in every third bay.
Mr Fini said if he did another Nightingale project in Perth, he would consider having no parking, like the model’s Victorian developments.
WA planning group Urbis and the Urban Development Institute of Australia WA’s recent homebuyer sentiment survey asked buyers what length of time they saw as reasonable for the increased upfront costs of a sustainable dwelling to be offset by its reduced operational costs.
It found that 55 per cent of potential buyers put that number at 3 years as acceptable while a further 7 per cent said payback was not important.
Urbis director David Cresp told Business News environmental credentials were becoming increasingly important to buyers of new dwellings.
“We are seeing more apartment buildings that are trying to have a focus on sustainability to reduce the common running costs of the building,” he said.
Mr Cresp said Nightingale raised the bar on what apartment owners could expect in terms of sustainability and a sense of community. However, the slow take-up reflected a resistance to change among some buyers.
“WA is often seen as fairly conservative and new models are often initially looked at with some scepticism,” he said.
“The bar is increasing all the time for what buyers are now looking for and coming to expect.”
The first Nightingale Housing project 'Nightingale 1' was developed in Brunswick in 2017. Photo: Peter Clarke
Nightingale chief executive Dan McKenna told Business News the Fremantle project was a massive step outside the group’s comfort zone.
“The first project is always the hardest,” he said. “We did a lot of work in Melbourne before we … became super popular, and [Melbourne] is also the town in which we’re embedded … we live in the suburbs and people know us and what we’re about.
“It is always .... a major leap of faith when we jump into new cities.”
Mr McKenna said the intention was to expand into every state, given the need for affordable housing and the growing importance of addressing climate change through building design.
“We think we should be able to take this across the country, but the demand has never quite matched what we’ve seen in Melbourne,” he said.
“People love to see what you’re talking about, and there’s nothing like walking through a building.
“It’s one thing to read floor plans, to see renders, and it’s another thing to actually see a build.”
Mr McKenna said he hoped Nightingale Fremantle would act as a catalyst for similar developments in WA.
“We definitely do think that it could and should work in WA,” he said.
