This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
MORE whole office floors in the Melbourne CBD owned by collapsed workspace provider Victory Offices have hit the market.
The campaign for four properties within Victory Tower comes as another whole office floor within the 420 Collins Street building was passed in at auction a vendor bid of $2.4 million.
That mortgagee auction came 10 years after Dan Baxter, founder of Victory Offices, bought the 393 sqm space for $1.57 million. It was offered with a lease to Orange International College until May 2028.
Baxter owned six properties within the tower until Victory Offices collapsed in November, having battled the impact of the pandemic on the office market – despite some of its competitors finding clearer skies as businesses embraced hybrid working.
Now, three more office floors and a ground floor retail shop, totalling 1,361 sqm, are up for grabs individually or in any combination. They are being sold on behalf of partners at Grant Thornton in their capacity as the agents for the mortgagee. JLL’s Nick Peden, Tim Carr, Josh Rutman and Mingxuan Li are managed the expressions of interest campaign, which closes Friday, 5th May.
All four properties were occupied by Victory and are now vacant. They include office floors on levels one, two and nine, and a ground floor shop utilised as a Victory Lounge.
Peden said it is an extremely rare opportunity to be able to acquire multiple whole office floors and prime retail within one of the Melbourne CBD’s most highly sought-after buildings.
“Being located directly opposite the recently completed $1.25 billion Collins Arch development, this whole precinct has been entirely transformed.”
Carr said Collins Street is “Australia’s premier business address and is in high demand from both tenants and investors and is surrounded by institutional grade assets and ongoing development in the immediate precinct”.
Recent whole-floor office sales in the precinct are have ranged from $8,875 per sqm, for a level eight space at 276-278 Collins Street, to $11,200 per sqm for a level 12 office at 256 Queen Street.
At the time of listing in 2019, Victory had 21 co-working venues and a market capitalisation of more than $80 million after an initial public offering at $2 share, but its share price plummeted to 4.2c just before administrators were called in, putting its value at $6.6 million.
Until May last year it was chaired by former Victorian premier Steve Bracks.
