Robert Magid property sale picks up pace as apartments and Manly Wharf to go

Robert Magid is stepping up his biggest ever portfolio asset sale, with more than $400m worth of high-profile properties being sold in less than a year.

Property investor Robert Magid is stepping up his biggest ever portfolio asset sale, with more than $400m worth of properties being sold in less than a year.

The hospitality and apartments veteran, who also owns the high-profile The Australian Jewish News, has been selling off property as markets have picked up, leaving his family cashed up as the economic cycle turns.

The Sydney businessman quietly offloaded a Bondi Junction apartment site in the city’s east to a Chinese developer for $167m and is putting Manly Wharf up for grabs for about $80m. The moves come in the wake of offloading two hotels, in Sydney and Melbourne, earlier this year, for close to $90m, as he scales back parts of his hospitality empire.

Mr Magid owns TMG Developments and was worth about $588m according to The List – Australia’s Richest 250.

The Bondi Junction site, in which interests associated with developer Allen Linz held a minority interest, sold to Chinese developer JQZ. The eight-storey office block could be demolished to make way for a 20-storey, mixed-use tower, which Mr Magid had long planned. But he took a cautious approach and sold it this year via CBRE.

His portfolio had already been lightened by the sales of the Hotel Lindrum in Melbourne to property developer Time & Place for about $50m. That triple fronted property, which has one of Melbourne’s most famous facades, was sold with a permit for a 30-level hotel and residential project.

In Sydney, Indonesian-backed Invictus Pacific Alpha Management picked up Mr Magid‘s Harbour Rocks Hotel for about $40m. TMG also sold a major development site in Melbourne’s Mulgrave to Charter Hall for $84m, as part of plans to “recycle and redirect capital”.

The looming sale of Manly Wharf is tipped to generate significant international and local buyer interest. CBRE’s Simon Rooney and James Douglas are handling the marketing of the retail and hospitality asset.

BEN WILMOT