Building analysis · 71-85 Spring Street, Bondi Junction
One hundred and eight sales across nineteen floors of a Bondi Junction tower — and the view costs less than you'd think.
71-85 Spring Street, Bondi Junction NSW 2022. Strata plan SP31023 · sales recorded from level 10 to level 28.
Ask most people what makes one apartment in a tower worth more than another and they will say the floor. Higher is better, and the top is best. It is the most intuitive idea in vertical living, and it is repeated so often that nobody bothers to check it.
The tower at 71-85 Spring Street lets you check it. Because the apartment numbers encode the level — 1002 is on ten, 2803 is on twenty-eight — every sale in the register can be placed on a floor. I have 108 verified sales spanning levels 10 to 28. That is enough to ask a simple question: how much does going up actually pay?
The answer is that it pays, and then it stops paying, and something else takes over entirely.
First, the shape of the whole building. Ranked from lowest sale to highest, the 108 results run from $700,000 to $5,600,000 — an eightfold range inside a single strata plan.
Sales ranked lowest to highest, with the 2026 sales marked
The middle is dense and the top is thin. Twenty-four sales sit under $1,000,000 and six sit above $3,500,000. The median is $1,610,000 and the average $1,794,776 — a gap of nearly $185,000, created almost entirely by a handful of results at the very top.
Now group those sales by level. If the intuition about height were right, this chart would climb from left to right.
Median sale by floor band
It does not climb. It steps up once, between the low teens and level 15, and then it flattens completely. Levels 15 to 19 record a median of $1,702,500. Levels 25 to 28 — the top four floors of the building — record $1,615,000, which is lower.
There is a real premium for getting above the surrounding rooflines and into clear air. Once you are there, the market stops paying for altitude. A buyer on level 27 is not looking at a materially better outlook than a buyer on level 18, and the price register says they know it.
The market pays to clear the rooftops. It does not pay to keep climbing after that.
If height explains so little above level 15, something else must be doing the work. Group the same sales by their position on the floorplate instead — the last two digits of the apartment number, which stay constant as you go up — and a much sharper pattern appears.
Median sale by position on the floorplate · $ millions
Line 11 records a median of $2,255,000. Line 04 records $1,020,000. That is a 2.2-fold difference between two stacks of apartments in the same tower, sharing the same lifts and the same levy schedule, separated by nothing but where they sit on the floorplate.
The building sorts into two clear halves. Lines 02, 05, 07, 08 and 11 all sit above $1,700,000. Lines 01, 04, 06 and 10 all sit below $1,300,000. Whatever those first five have — aspect, outlook, floor area, or all three together — it is worth more than nine storeys of height.
I can't separate aspect from size in the main register, because that export carries neither floor area nor bedroom count. It is entirely possible that line 11 is simply the three-bedroom stack and line 04 the studios, in which case the chart is measuring square metres rather than views. My own reading is that it's both — larger apartments are usually placed on the better aspect — but I want to be clear that the register alone doesn't settle it.
Four sales in the tower now carry 2026 dates, bedroom counts and an earlier price. They are the first records that let me test the argument rather than infer it.
The floor test. Apartments 1903 and 2009 are both three-bedroom. They sold nineteen days apart, one level apart. The lower one sold for $10,000 more. That is the flat part of the floor chart, in two sales.
The exception. Apartment 2505 sold for $3,500,000 — about $750,000 above the other two three-bedroom sales, and it is the highest of the four. Height may be part of that. So may the line, the outlook and the condition. One sale cannot separate them, and I won't pretend it does.
The size question. Line 08 is a two-bedroom on this evidence, and it carries the second-highest median in the building. Line 03 is a three-bedroom, and its median sits well below. If size alone set the price, that order would be reversed. It is one sale on each line, so I hold it lightly — but it leans towards position doing real work.
The growth. All four sellers more than doubled their money, gross. The holds ran from eleven to twenty-five years. Compounded, that is roughly 5.5 to 8 per cent a year before costs. Four repeat sales are not a growth rate for the building. They are four owners' results.
One more thing. All four sit in the top quarter of the ladder. That is what an undated register does: it mixes decades. A median drawn from it is a midpoint of history, not a guide to this year's price.
Worth naming, because they would distort any figure quoted from this register.
Three separate apartments record a sale price of exactly $5,600,000. Prices that round can repeat by coincidence, but three identical results at the top of one building is more likely a single transaction across multiple lots than three unrelated sales. Set them aside and the building median falls to $1,577,500.
And one apartment on the top floor records $700,000 — the lowest price in the entire dataset, sitting directly above results of $4,600,000 and $5,060,000 on the same level. Without a sale date I can't tell whether that's an old transaction, a family transfer, or an error. I would not use it either way.
An eightfold price range, and the floor number explains almost none of it.
Above level 15, height stops carrying the argument. If your appraisal leans on being high in the building, it is leaning on something the sales record does not support.
The apartments directly above and below yours — same last two digits, same aspect, same floorplate — are the truest comparables you have. There are typically five to twelve of them in this register, which is a genuine evidence base.
At $1,610,000 it sits between two halves of a building that trade $700,000 apart. If you're on the strong side it undersells you. If you're on the other, it sets an expectation you'll spend months failing to meet.
Before I give an opinion on price I read the sales in your own line, not the suburb and not the tower average. If you own at Spring Street and want that read, I'm happy to sit down and go through it.
Request a free appraisal Begin a conversationPrincipal, Weiss Real Estate. 35 years in the Eastern Suburbs.
Methodology. 122 records were supplied in a single title export covering 71-85 Spring Street, Bondi Junction, all under strata plan SP31023. Fourteen records were excluded because their apartment number matched their lot number and each carried an exact price twin elsewhere in the file, indicating a duplicate entry against a secondary lot series rather than a separate sale. The remaining 108 sales form the basis of the distribution, floor and line figures above. Floor level and line position are derived from apartment numbering, not from a supplied field. That export carried no sale dates, floor areas or bedroom counts. The four dated 2026 sales come from a property export dated 5 October 2026; their earlier prices and years are from CoreLogic RP Data. Prices matching all four already appear in the 108, so they are marked on the ladder and not added to the count. Changes on those four are gross, compare the 2026 price with the previous priced sale, and exclude stamp duty, selling costs and renovations. Annual figures are approximate, as only the year of the earlier sale is known. No price per square metre has been calculated or implied.
This article is general commentary on the Eastern Suburbs property market and does not take account of any individual's circumstances, objectives or financial position. It is not financial, legal or investment advice. Property values move, and past sales are not a reliable indicator of future results. Alan Weiss, Weiss Real Estate — Licence 218396, independent contractor for eXp Australia.
