Aria sells over $500m at Sanctuary Residences before public launch

Aria Property Group opened public sales at Sanctuary Residences in South Brisbane, Queensland, on 19 October 2026, after the developer said it had sold more than $500m worth of apartments in the tower during September without a public advertising campaign, according to trade coverage from Apartments.com.au and The Urban Developer. The 231-apartment tower at 164-190 Melbourne Street is the first of three towers planned for Aria’s wider Sanctuary precinct, designed by architect Bates Smart.

Why it matters

Aria’s own account of the pre-launch sell-down, rather than an independent sales register, is the basis for the $500m figure: South Brisbane’s off-market apartment sales do not carry a public transaction ledger the way freehold sales do, so trade press coverage sourced to the developer is the only record available for a campaign run through Aria’s own database. Set against that, Cotality data cited by The Urban Developer show Brisbane home values fell 1.5 per cent in September, with estimated capital-city sales volumes down 19.1 per cent year on year, a backdrop The Urban Developer said the Sanctuary result ran counter to. For other Brisbane developers, the figure reads as a demand signal for large-format product rather than a verified sales total: Aria’s residential manager, Brent Liddell, said “We designed Sanctuary for that buyer and the response has been beyond expectations,” pointing to three- and four-bedroom stock as the apartments that moved fastest ahead of the public campaign. Whether that demand extends to the two-bedroom apartments now on public release, or to the precinct’s second and third towers, is untested until buyers outside Aria’s own database are in the market.

The numbers

The Urban Developer’s 15 October report is inconsistent on how many of the tower’s 231 apartments sold before the public release. It says 165 three- and four-bedroom apartments sold, with the remaining stock due to launch on 19 October. Elsewhere it lists 100 three-bedroom, 65 four-bedroom and 66 two-bedroom apartments as sold, a tally that sums to all 231. Apartments.com.au’s 19 October account fits the first reading: 165 of the 231 apartments are three- and four-bedroom residences, the stock that drew the strongest demand, and the remaining apartments went to public release on 19 October. Neither Aria Property Group nor any public register has published a sales count to settle it. Where the figures agree: Sanctuary Residences has 231 apartments, interiors ranging from 100 to 204 sqm with balconies of 14 to 33 sqm, and public launch pricing from $1.99m for a two-bedroom apartment, $2.72m for a three-bedroom apartment and $4.01m for a four-bedroom apartment. Aria assembled the Melbourne Street site over eight years and started civil works in April 2024.

What’s next

The apartments released on 19 October remain on public sale, with no closing date reported by either outlet. Sanctuary Residences is the first of three towers planned for the precinct, and neither outlet reports a scale, design or timing for the other two. No completion date for this first tower has been published. A short distance away, Taiwan’s Daiken bought a South Brisbane office building for $81m on a Kurilpa site zoned to 30 storeys, a reminder that the suburb’s development pipeline runs beyond residential towers. Until Aria or an independent register publishes a verified sales figure for Sanctuary Residences, the $500m and $519m numbers in circulation stand as the developer’s own account, not a confirmed total.