Singapore investors move on Perth

The group bought the 11-storey complex from Credit Suisse’s real estate arm, which had picked up number 45 on the famed Perth boulevard from Stockland in 2012 for $55.3 million.

The building, which sits in Perth’s core CBD office precinct and comprises 10,010 sqm of space, was refurbished by Credit Suisse but values have only recently started to recover in the WA capital.

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The tower was put to market via JLL’s John Williams and Nigel Freshwater and CBRE’s Lloyd Jenkins and Ben Younger midyear but did not immediately sell.

The latest deal was concluded off-market with Singapore-based investment house Red Hill Capital Partners involved, executives says.

Straits is one of a number of groups, including Primewest, GDI, Brookfield and Dexus, investing in Perth’s CBD as the office leasing market starts to pick up.

The building is near the Hay Street malls and the Cathedral and Treasury Precinct, as well as the Elizabeth Quay precinct, which has emerged as a hub for development.

Straits says it has a strategy of redeploying capital from its existing portfolio of high quality, but low yielding investment properties into potentially higher return real estate opportunities.

Straits earlier this year backed the purchase of the Telstra-occupied office block at 320 Pitt St in Sydney, in another play on an improving leasing market.

The active trading house sold a Melbourne office building for about $161.5 million last year. In that deal it sold 114 William St to Swiss investment house AFIAA.

For Credit Suisse’s real estate arm, the sale of the Perth tower is a switch by the group which last year bought another tower on the famed strip — 190 St Georges Terrace — from Terrace Properties for $64.2 million.

This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.