From social housing to $1.5m for a studio: minister hits out at ‘dud deal’ sale of Sydney’s Sirius building

In an email sent to prospective buyers this week, an agent described the Sirius development as a ‘celebration of unique charm reimagined and reinvented as luxury homes’. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

A decade ago the only way to secure a bed in Sydney’s brutalist icon, the Sirius building, was a proven need and time on the social housing waitlist. Now the price of admission starts at $1.55m – for a studio apartment.

The last of the 76 apartments in the redeveloped complex in the shadow of the Harbour Bridge are on the market after the building was sold to a developer by the former Coalition state government for $150m in 2019.