Nightingale Housing was never your ordinary developer. Right from the start, this new housing model, founded by Jeremy Mcleod and Tamara Veltre from Breathe Architecture with the support of six leading Melbourne architects, shot for the stars.
It wanted to produce the most affordable and sustainable housing Australia had ever seen.
Before long, that ambition included scale. This came through a licensing model, with oversight from a committee. Those with a licence could find a site, buy it and get an IP (intellectual property) pack from Nightingale on how to set up company structures and raise capital for the project.
The Nightingale model believes that “homes should be built for people, not profit.” Therefore, you can’t buy one of its apartments for investment and must intend to be a resident. To purchase, you need to enter a ballot and hope your name is drawn when an apartment becomes available. Alongside owner occupiers, up to 20 per cent of each project is sold to Community Housing Providers as affordable rentals.
If you’re lucky enough to win a ballot, you need to first pay a $10,000 committal fee, along with the balance of a 10 per cent deposit at the point of sale – although 5 per cent deposits can sometimes also be arranged for first home buyers and those needing financial assistance.
The organisation is committed to selling the homes “at cost”, meaning they are sold for the amount it takes to procure, design, manage and construct them without any “meaty profit margins”. This also means that the resale of these apartments is capped with a maximum resale price calculated via the average in the area.
Saves money and environmental costs
Nightingale questions the status quo to save money and environmental costs in housing. For instance, carbon and costs are saved in the building by removing the carbon-heavy car parks, second bathrooms and individual laundries from the buildings and replacing them with shared mobility hubs, bathhouses and beautiful shared rooftop laundries connected to the rooftop garden and dining spaces.
Costs are also saved through the development process itself by taking out the display suite, the marketing team and advertising and finally by taking out the real estate agent and their commission. Instead, Nightingale engages directly with future residents through information sessions and sells the housing through a ballot process.
“So, all those are things you take out,” Jeremy McLeod told The Fifth Estate’s podcast How to Build a Better World.
“You build less, but you give more simultaneously. What we found is that it was easier to sell the apartments.”
At its core, Nightingale also aimed to “democratise capital” and create a “sustainability of reductionism – reducing cost and carbon”.
Another rule was that apartment owners would pay $100 a year to the land’s Traditional Owners.
Early and important supporters were Small Giants’ Berry Liberman and Danny Almagor, who funded Breathe Architecture’s first development, The Commons, the prototype building for Nightingale.
Hanna Ebeling, chief executive of Sefa (Social Enterprise Finance Australia), immediately saw the “elegance” of the Nightingale model, a housing model of reductionism and a sharing economy, McLeod said.
No gas, fossil fuel free
Nightingale buildings are 100 per cent electric (no gas) and connected through an embedded energy network that is powered by rooftop solar and 100 per cent certified GreenPower.
Residences are also built near public transport and offer ample bicycle parking. There’s also communal rooftop laundry and entertainment facilities with water harvesting for productive gardens.
By late 2024, Nightingale Housing had completed 21 projects, with three more in the works – one scheduled for completion each year until 2027. Most projects are in Victoria – 15 in Brunswick and Brunswick East; other Victorian locations include Preston, Ballarat, and Fairfield. Across the nation, there are also developments at Marrickville in NSW, Fremantle in Western Australia and Bowden in South Australia.
McLeod says that Nightingale currently has over 20,000 people on the database of potential buyers. In September of this year, Nightingale flagged the completion of Nightingale Studios, a commercial space for small business owners, creatives, designers, retailers, and hospitality venues.
The spaces are at Wurru Wurru Biik, part of the broader Nightingale precinct. This is alongside Nightingale Village, which brought together six architects, each delivering their project under the Nightingale licence model.
Nightingale projects have celebrated more than 70 local, national and international awards. Most recently, Nightingale Marrickville in Sydney (developed in collaboration with Fresh Hope Communities on land leased from Churches of Christ NSW and ACT) was announced as the global winner of the 2024 Urban Land Institute’s Awards for Excellence, and Nightingale Village won gold in the Housing, category at The 2024 World Architecture Festival.
