Hong Kong buyer doubles down on St Kilda Rd
Hong Kong investors have locked in their status as the latest property players buying up in Melbourne’s leafy St Kilda Road precinct, with two buildings worth about $170 million sold to a single buyer.
The group, operating through trusts controlled by Mars Family Holdings, picked up one building at No. 420 from funds manager Vantage Property Investments for about $98 million.
The Mars-linked company, associated with Hong Kong’s Mai family, has just bought the neighbouring property at 424-426 St Kilda Rd for about $70 million.
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That property was sold by Chinese-backed developer Woodlink, which had once proposed the $360m Illoura House apartment project on the site.
CBRE’s Mark Wizel, Lewis Tong and Josh Rutman handled the latest sale and also brokered No. 420 in conjunction with Cushman & Wakefield’s Luke Etherington, Mark Hansen and Josh Cullen, but declined to comment on the buyer, saying only it was an offshore Asian group.
The existing building will be refurbished and re-leased as the unit project no longer stacked up in a harsher climate for pre-sales.
“The property lends itself well to refurbishment and re-leasing in Melbourne’s increasingly tight office market and so it makes perfect sense for the purchaser to proceed on that course,” Wizel says. The property still has potential as a long-term redevelopment prospect, he adds.
Known as Illoura House, it comprises a net lettable area of 12,659sqm over six levels with parking for 144 cars on the 4645sqm site.
Woodlink won a permit for an 18-level mixed-use building nearly three times the current height with 163 apartments and 176 hotel rooms.
Woodlink has since secured agreements with the building’s remaining tenants to allow refurbishment to start almost immediately.
Tong says Asian buyers are flocking to the Melbourne boulevard, outlaying more than $1.2 billion along St Kilda Road over the past 2½ years.
Chinese investor Michael Xie last year paid tycoon John Beville $163 million for the nine-level office block at 509 St Kilda Rd.
This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.
