This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
BALACLAVA landmark Beller House is up for sale again, as the vendors look to become the second owners within a few years to make a quick profit from the asset.
The 2,720 sqm site at 281A-289 Carlisle Street, often referred to as Carlisle Corner, is at the entrance of the Balaclava retail strip in Melbourne’s inner-south east and has a two and three-level retail and office building of 3,132 sqm, and 44 parking spaces.
Tenants include a gym, restaurant and medical businesses.
Zoned Commercial 1, the property offers “enormous potential to design and deliver a landmark mixed-use development” according to CBRE’s Mark Wizel, who is marketing the property with colleagues Nathan Mufale and Rory James in conjunction with Michael Gross and Benjamin Klein of Gross Waddell.
Sources have suggested the asset will easily clear the $20 million mark. It currently has 18 tenancies and returns around $1.09 million per annum, showing strong rental gains on the fully leased estimate of around $963,000 when it last traded.
The vendors paid $18.5 million for the asset in October 2015, with the previous owners having acquired it 12 months before for $12.5 million.
The property was built in 1973 at the gateway of the popular retail strip, positioned in the heart of Melbourne’s Jewish community.
“It’s very difficult to put a price on an asset which has so much to offer in terms of its existing leasing profile, its exceptional location, its place, and perhaps emotional attachment, within a well-resourced, tight-knit community, along with the massive potential it has to produce a landmark development for Balaclava,” Wizel said.
Wizel said suburban strip retail properties that contained high underlying land value, underpinned by national retailers, serviced by public transport with development precedents in place, were very high on the list of potential investments from local, interstate and Asian developers.
“The sale of Heidelberg’s Burgundy Plaza in November last year is an example of developers’ willingness to accept tight yields (sub-3%) in order to capitalize on an attractive eight-plus level height precedent.”
The expressions of interest campaign closes in May.
Last week, the owners of the former B’nai B’rith House community centre site nearby sold the 1,735 sqm corner property for $8.26 million plus GST with approval for a townhouse and apartment development, having reportedly paid $5.2 million for the site just 18 months prior.
Almost two years ago another major corner site on Carlisle Street, Carlisle House at 318-320 Carlisle Street, was sold by Gross Waddell for $8 million to a private investor on a tight 2.5% net yield. The 1,174 sqm site has a building area of 1,118 sqm and is zoned Commercial 1, and was offered to the market for the first time in almost 30 years.
Australian Property Journal
