No grounds for rejection

While the view might be your favourite part of your apartment or home, don’t count on them sticking around forever.

Homeowners are not entitled to their views, a matter which recently came to the fold with a proposal for a hotel on 959 Wellington Street, West Perth.

The 14-storey tower, which included a six-storey height bonus, was approved by the City of Perth Local Development Assessment Panel (LDAP), allowing the Melbourne-based Barnes Capital to continue with its plans despite complaints from locals.

The 48m-high hotel, which is 19m above the maximum limit for this area, was given the go-ahead with the height bonus and will comprise 129 hotel rooms.

Nine locals expressed their concerns about the development, ranging from overshadowing, to the general height of the building. However, the loss of their views and a negative effect towards their apartment values was a common complaint.

“All the beautiful city views would disappear – one of the main reasons why we purchased our lovely apartment,” a neighbour said.

City of Perth LDAP expressed their sympathy but dismissed the concerns of neighbours.

“The impact of the proposed development on the value of properties and the loss of views are matters that, whilst understandably of high importance to individual landowners, are not directly relevant in any assessment of the planning merit of a proposed development and cannot be specifically addressed within the relevant planning framework,” they said.

REIWA President Damian Collins said while he understood property owners wanted to keep their views, the current situation rested on a buyer beware ethos.

“The only way you can try and protect the views is to get the locals to lobby hard for the local council to have lower zoning in front of you. That’s the only way,” he said.

“You have to go in buyer beware and know that if there are properties in front of you, between you and whatever your view is, there is always the risk of someone, somewhere, someday coming along and building to the zoning, whatever that is, and you can lose your views.”

Mr Collins said considering views as ground to reject a proposal would make it near impossible to get developments off the ground.

“Views are really not considered as a valid planning grounds to reject because otherwise no-one would ever build except if someone built five blocks back – no-one else could build in front of them,” he said.

Mr Collins also said it would raise the issue of just how far a view would be considered, stating that if someone had distant views of Kings Park for example, a development hundreds of metres away might be rejected based on it potentially blocking their views.

If you are worried about a future development impeding on your views, Mr Collins recommended reading up on the local zoning laws.

“If you’ve got something that you particularly like about the property with a view corridor, you need to check out the zoning of all the properties in that corridor to see if there’s ever going to be a chance that something to a higher density – even if it’s a single-storey, two or three-storey house – will be built in front of you,” he said.