New Apartment Tower Approved for Fishermans Bend: What It Means for Melbourne's Stretched Property Market

Planning approval has been granted for a 28-storey residential tower on Plummer Street in Fishermans Bend, Melbourne's flagship urban renewal precinct, adding 312 apartments to a suburb still waiting on promised infrastructure. The Victorian Department of Transport and Planning signed off on the permit in late June, with the developer — a consortium backed by Mirvac and a Singapore-based fund — targeting a construction start in the first quarter of 2027.

The timing matters. Melbourne's median house price sits at roughly $920,000 and the city's rental vacancy rate has hovered below 1.5 per cent for most of 2025 and into 2026. New supply is desperately needed, yet every major approval also raises the same uncomfortable question the market has been wrestling with for three years: will new apartments actually reach buyers and renters who need relief, or simply absorb investor demand and sit empty while families double up in Frankston and Werribee?

Why Fishermans Bend, and Why Now

Fishermans Bend was rezoned back in 2018 under the Fishermans Bend Framework with an ambition to house 80,000 residents by 2050. Eight years on, the population sits closer to 4,000. Roads are unfinished, the promised Anzac Station on the Metro Tunnel extension remains unfunded beyond an electoral promise, and two primary school sites on Boundary Road have been earmarked but not built. Approvals like this one inject real momentum into a precinct that has spent nearly a decade looking more like a planning document than a suburb.

The Plummer Street tower will include 68 social and affordable housing units — roughly 22 per cent of the total stock — managed through the Housing First program administered by Housing Choices Australia. That figure is above the typical 10 per cent threshold developers have historically offered to satisfy planning requirements, and it reflects pressure from the State Government's updated Apartment Design Guidelines, which took effect in March 2025. Whether that proportion survives value-engineering once construction costs are finalised is a separate question entirely.

Two kilometres east, the suburb of South Melbourne is watching closely. Agents along Clarendon Street report that off-the-plan inquiries have picked up since the Fishermans Bend approval was flagged in local planning notices, with one-bedroom units in the precinct's existing stock — buildings like the Arkley complex on Buckhurst Street — already trading between $550,000 and $640,000. That sits comfortably below the city-wide unit median of $620,000, which partly explains why Fishermans Bend has attracted younger buyers priced out of Port Melbourne proper, where comparable stock clears closer to $750,000.

What the Data Suggests About Oversupply Risk

The apartment oversupply fear that haunted Melbourne's CBD between 2017 and 2020 is less relevant here than it might appear. The Property Council of Australia's 2025 Pipeline Report recorded just 6,200 new apartment completions across metropolitan Melbourne last year, against a benchmark of roughly 14,000 required annually to keep pace with population growth driven by net overseas migration — which the ABS recorded at 149,000 for Victoria in the year to September 2025. Supply is not the enemy right now. The enemy is slow delivery.

The Plummer Street project, if it breaks ground on schedule, would complete in 2030 — four years away. Between now and then, anyone hoping the approval translates quickly into rental relief should manage expectations. The most immediate market effect is likely to be felt in pre-sale activity and investor sentiment rather than actual dwellings occupied.

For buyers considering off-the-plan entry into this project or comparable Fishermans Bend stock, the practical calculus involves stamp duty concessions available under the Victorian Off-the-Plan Concession for owner-occupiers, which can reduce duty liability significantly on contracts below $750,000. Given that Geelong buyers have been stung by stamp duty blowouts on established stock — with duty bills on median-priced homes jumping sharply in the past two years — locking in a contract price now and benefiting from that concession is a strategy worth running past a solicitor before settlement terms shift again. The broader market won't wait for the cranes to arrive.