Church Street Centrepiece Investment
Local, interstate and offshore investors are expected to compete for the NAB bank branch premises in Church Street, Brighton, which will represent a generational chance to secure a retail investment in the absolute prime of the prized blue-ribbon shopping strip.
Fitzroys agents Chris James and Mark Talbot are marketing 35 Church Street on behalf of private owners that have held the site for 23 years. The property goes to auction on Thursday, 29th August with interest expected to be around $6 million.
On a 288sqm site, the property has an 8.5-metre high-exposure frontage to Church Street. ASX-listed tenant NAB has a long-term lease over the property that is presently returning $214,470 per annum plus outgoings including land tax.
The property is positioned within the most highly sought-after and tightly-held section of Church Street, between Carpenter and St Andrews Streets, which is currently experiencing a near record-low 0% vacancy. Neighbouring tenants include a number of Australia’s leading high-end retailers in Country Road, Mecca, Scanlan Theodore, Seed Heritage, Bed Bath N Table, Sportscraft, Husk and Saba while the famous Dendy cinema complex is opposite.
“Church Street has retained its reputation as Melbourne’s best-performing retail strip, consistently boasting the state’s lowest vacancy rates,” James said.
“Opportunities for investors to acquire a Church Street, Brighton asset are rare, let alone a double fronted freehold of this nature and attract fierce competition from across Australia and offshore, reflecting the tightly held nature of the strip, its constrained supply, and positioning within one of Melbourne’s most affluent and established consumer catchments.”
Talbot said Church Street, Brighton’s immediate catchment has been bolstered with the introduction of medium-density residential developments in what is broadly a low-rise suburb, while the suburb is home to a number of highly sought after private schools.
“With recent cuts to the official interest rate, it is an ideal time for investors to secure strong income-producing asset.”
Fitzroys sold the two-level, 110 sqm building home stationery company Smiggle, part of major retail player Solomon Lew’s ASX-listed Premier Investments, at 67 Church Street last year for $2.41 million, at a yield of 3.2%.
Strong Fundamentals Spur Suburban Office Building Sales
Low vacancies and increasing rents and land values have contributed to a string of Melbourne suburban office assets changing hands.
In South Melbourne, Rescom Mortgages sold 100 Park St, which it has occupied for 20 years, to a local investor for $8.088 million. The three-level building has 1,369sqm of office space and ground floor retail and is on a 595sqm corner site. Nearby, Valeo Construction’s Dimitrios Tzouvelis sold the vacant two-level building at 34 Eastern Road for around $10 million to developer H.CO Property.
Further out from the city, supermarket owners Leo and Rose Blake sold 3-7 Hamilton Street in Mont Albert for around $18 million, reportedly to an offshoot of Ballarat builder H. Troon, and in Malvern East, Momentum Wealth Management Group director Paul Huggins sold the two-level corner office building at 207-213 Waverley Road, the long-term headquarters of Dennis Family Homes, for circa $13 million.
Disclosure: The weekly Fitzroys Property Wrap is for information only on transactions in the Melbourne property market. Fitzroys provides this information as a public service. We are not purporting that all sales and leases within this report were transacted by Fitzroys. Terms/Privacy © Copyright 2019 Fitzroys.