This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
EXCLUSIVE: Hot on the heels of Guangzhou-based R&F Properties offloading the Kinnear’s Precinct this week, another Chinese developer is looking to flip an even bigger development site in Melbourne for a tidy profit, Australian Property Journal can reveal.
- What Hangzhou-based developer Dahua continues to divest sites
- Why Chinese developers are scaling back in Australia
- What next The site will likely to be purchased by local developer
The Shanghai-based developer is understood to have started to sound out market interest for the site at 75 McCormacks Road, Clyde North in Melbourne’s burgeoning south eastern suburbs.
The property was previously farmland, bought by a local farming family for $450,000 who on sold it a year later for $415,520, with the latter owner becoming a multimillionaire overnight, when the land was rezoned to residential and sold to a developer.
Property developer Sightstone paid $45.58 million for the site in 2017 and flipped to Dahua in July 2021 for $104 million.
Due to the prolonged settlement period, it is understood that Dahua has recently settled on its acquisition, but it is no longer interested in pursuing the development of a masterplanned community.
Instead Dahua is looking to flip the site, hoping to replicate Sightstone’s financial windfall.
Sightstone had also acquired the site with a long settlement period of four years, and on sold the site to Dahua within three months of completing its acquisition.
According to industry sources, Dahua is looking put a price tag of about $140 million on the land, but sources suggest there could be difficulty in achieving that, given the yield.
The 40.9 hectares land is PSP approved with yield estimates of about 700-750 lots with an end value of about $250 million.
Australian Property Journal contacted Dahua for comment but the company was unavailable.
Dahua’s upcoming listing comes hot on the heels of R&F Property Australia, an offshoot of China’s R&F Properties, selling the coveted Kinnear’s Precinct mixed-use in Footscray to Australian developer 3L Alliance, as reported by Australian Property Journal this week.
Like R&F, Dahua is one of the few Chinese developers remaining in the Australian market that did not immediately follow the exodus amidst the debt crisis and Beijing’s clampdown on the flight of capital offshore.
One of the biggest players, Country Garden, last year exited Australia after selling a massive site in Sydney’s south west. Prior to that, it divested a Wyndham Vale land for $250 million after paying a record $400 million in 2017.
But Dahua is not actively undertaking any development activity, instead it is progressively winding down its Australian business, selling an inner city development site in 2021, and put its 220ha Riverhills estate in Wollert on the market in 2023.
It acquired the Wollert site in 2018 for around $70 million.
The proposed sale of the Clyde North site will leave Dahua with few ongoing projects in Melbourne.
Dahua owns two sites with a combined 298.4ha in Point Cook in the western suburbs. The largest is a 200ha land it acquired for $380 million in 2016 and the second 98.4ha land was purchased for $140 million. The properties are located within the proposed new suburb of Aviators Field.
