This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
A HAWTHORN development site has sold for $5.85 million under the hammer after receiving 230 enquiries during the campaign.
It comes shortly after another Hawthorn development site, at 21 Queens Avenue, also sold at auction for $2.389 million. Both sites were snapped up by local developers.
Teska Carson’s Tom Maule and Michael Taylor sold the $5.85 million sale of the 96-98 Morang Rd property, at a land rate of $4,957 per sqm, with eight bidders competing for the 1,180sqm site.
The site is on the corner of Glan Avon Road features Yarra River frontage and just metres from the intersection of Swan and Power streets, with current improvements including a two-level 870sqm commercial office building with four separate tenancy areas.
Maule said that while there remained a strong market for higher density apartment living in some suburbs, a growing cohort of apartment occupiers were seeking something different and developers were responding by offering an alternative product to a new market in the form of smaller, boutique developments.
“This is really all about the maturity of the apartment market which is a relatively new concept for Australians who had hitherto been conditioned to house and land living in a country which has plenty of space,” he said. “Now that the apartment market has become more accepted and well-established we are starting to see some differentiation in occupier and buyer preference,”
He added that a new trend to townhouses was an example of that differentiation and that had been picked up by savvy developers who were now seeking suitable sites to capitalise on the new market.
Maule said land rate paid for the side was an extraordinary number in terms of what has been the historical norm for residential land values in the area.
The 502sqm Queens Avenue site is located close to Auburn Railway Station and sold at a land rate of $4,759 per sqm, with its Commercial 1 zoning potentially allowing for mixed use or intensive residential development. The site was sold with a single-level warehouse leased until April 2018, at a passing yield of 2.1%.
Australian Property Journal