This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
IKEA’s Abbotsford warehouse, around the corner from its Victoria Gardens outlet, has been picked up in off-market deal for $17.3 million, with the new owner believed to be the same investor that acquired the Australia Post and Honeywell facility across the street in October.
The Swedish furniture and homewares giant has a long-term lease over the 3,600 sqm office and warehouse building at 30-36 Grosvenor Street, which is on a 4,616 sqm Industrial 1-zoned site.
CBRE’s Mark Wizel and Lewis Tong negotiated the sale at a 4.88% yield. IKEA’s lease returns around $845,000 per annum net.
Wizel said the purchase was ostensibly a longer-term landbank play, adding that the property would obviously need to be rezoned for future development.
According to industry sources, it is the same buyer, former Poly Australia director Yuan Tao, who paid $37.28 million to Lascorp and Herzog Group for the saw-toothed 45-50 Grosvenor Street warehouse in October.
Formerly the long-term home of Weston’s biscuits, the site currently has a lease to Australia Post until 2028 and to Honeywell until 2021, and sold on at 5% yield. It has 8,145 sqm building on a 9,466 sqm site, which includes an open-air car park of 1,570 sqm, and frontages to Grosvenor Street, Southampton Crescent, and the Yarra River.
“Conventional wisdom would suggest this area is ripe for rezoning to higher value uses. It will be interesting to watch how it all plays out in the ensuing few years,” Wizel said.
Smaller commercial sites in the immediate vicinity of the properties changed hands last year. They included the 535 sqm MAV Audio warehouse at 33 Grosvenor Street, while an owner occupier purchased a single-level office building on a 675 sqm site for $3.126 million with the 300th bid of a marathon auction for 50-54 Duke Street.
In another nearby deal that landed in October, Peregrine Projects managing director Joseph Chahin sold the Carlton Brewhouse, at the entrance of the nine-hectare CUB brewery, for $10 million.
Chahin had purchased the Carlton Brewhouse, used as the CUB museum and an eatery, alongside the adjoining car park two years earlier for $10.25 million, and quickly sold the car park in a separate deal for $7 million.
Elsewhere in Abbotsford, the Zagame family have just acquired the former offices of the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union for $21 million.
On a recently rezoned 4,735 sqm site, it has an existing four-level brick building with a net lettable area of 4,252 sqm that fronts on to the Yarra, and will be kept and re-used.
Australian Property Journal
