Alice Stolz

Many families are embracing apartment living, with affordability, shared facilities and a sense of community appealing to buyers.

This Melbourne suburb has been overlooked in the past, but it’s just hit the national stage.

Call me harsh, but buyers who love the addition of a self-contained studio will be most likely drawn to the very fact it exists and it is habitable, not necessarily that it is fitted out with the most expensive marble you can buy or that it has a solid-gold loo.

As to what should and should not be incorporated into a studio, that is very much open to interpretation. Do you need a kitchenette? A fridge or a fireplace? What about a TV or a microwave? A Pilates bed or a Murphy bed?

Forget location, forget pools and forget views. Buyers, especially family buyers, love open-plan living just about more than anything else, says Alice Stolz.

Remember when ”Mum and Dad’s room” used to consist of a double bed and a couple of bedside tables? How have things changed.

While some teams understood the assignment on garden week, others missed the mark with their outdoor spaces.

Now the final spaces have been revealed and the homes completed, picking a favourite is harder than you’d think

Bathrooms are fast becoming one of the most amped-up rooms in our homes.

It seems hard to fathom, but the study – the room that many of us deemed done, dead and obsolete – has not only had a glow up, but, thanks to the pandemic, has also had a complete rebrand.