发布日期：2018年12月2日
发布媒体：《澳大利亚金融评论报》
报道原文：
Sterling Global has paid about $13.5 million for a 1690-square-metre site in Toorak in a sale that tests the strength of Melbourne's weaker development market.
The Melbourne-based developer paid a 50 per cent premium for the 63 Heyington Place property that sold for $8.88 million just two years ago because it came with a development permit for a scheme by design firm Architecton allowing a four-level development that would be harder to achieve under the current zoning requirements.
"Zoning has changed in the area," said Sterling Global development director Brandon Yeoh, who declined to confirm the price.
"The permit is quite valuable."
Even so, that value is limited. The sale this month, after a campaign by commercial agency Gross Waddell, followed an earlier four-month campaign by CBRE for vendors Xinmiao Xu and Shiju Dong ending in April that failed to sell with $15-million hopes.
While Sterling Global paid less than what the vendors first hoped to get, it was still too much for the site, said high-end buyers advocate David Morrell.
"It's in the middle of no man's land," Mr Morell said. "You'll have a wonderful view of the power lines."
Mr Yeoh said his company had engaged architecture firm Carr to tweak the existing four-level, 11-unit scheme to change the layout and create "12 or 13" apartments that will be targeted at local buyers and downsizers.
That market for the development with an end value of $40 million was still strong, he said. Sterling Global will start selling the homes in the first quarter of next year with a formal sales campaign in the second quarter.
Construction was likely to start in the second half of next year, Mr Yeoh said.
Sterling Global last year purchased a separate 7900-square-metre site in South Yarra from aged care developer John Matthies in a $35 million-plus transaction.
It has submitted a new residential scheme for the site, also designed by Carr, for approval.
The partly Chinese-owned developer has not transferred funds into Australia from overseas for a couple of years now, but has been recycling local capital into projects, Mr Yeoh said.
The strong local market has helped it do that. In September Sterling Global sold the 383 La Trobe Street building in central Melbourne – currently headquarters of the Australian Federal Police – to listed developer Mirvac for $122 million, having purchased the building for $70.7 million just three years earlier.
Part of the extra value for the site came from the developer doing what the vendor of the Heyington Place site did, albeit on a larger scale. Sterling Global got approval for a 70-level, mixed-use tower on the site, with a scheme designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, before selling.