Mixed messages for Varsity Lakes parcel
AMALAYSIAN accountant who has shelved an ambition to build a tower in which he would keep the penthouse could be poised to find out whether a bigspending Chinese group has done him any favours. That means, in a nutshell, have the Chinese set the price bar for Varsity Lakes land too high?
Four years ago the accountant spent $3.41 million on a development site, which he now wants to sell, in the heart of the suburb’s retail, commercial and apartment hub.
For his money he secured a near-3000sq m infill Lake St holding that came with approval for a low-rise unit and commercial building.
That was in 2014 and the chap surely was incredulous two years later over the sale of another site along the street.
A Chinese buyer rocked up and paid $26.4 million for a 7063sq m site that cost the previous owner a meagre $2.39 million in 2009.
In other words, one Lake St buyer had paid an enormously higher rate per square metre than the other for land in the same street.
Try $1193 per square metre for the Malaysian-owned land versus $3737 per square metre for the site bought by the Chinese buyer.
Both come under the area’s Centre Zone and, in plannerspeak, are suitable for intensive mixed-use development.
Just how intensive that development might be can depend upon such things as whether the water, sewage and road systems can cope.
There’s little doubt that the town plan that came into effect in 2016 gave the owners of both sites greater development leeway.
When the Malaysian site was bought in 2014 it came with approval for a three-level building with 118 units and five commercial titles.
Last year the owner gained the green light for a 16-level building with 159 units – no doubt one intended as his penthouse – and shops and offices at its base.
The site bought by the Chinese group came with a 2014 approval for an eightlevel building with 203 units, a restaurant and shops.
At the time of the group’s $26.4-million buy, it was flagged that it hoped to build 550 units for students but there’s been no development application.
The lusty rate per square metre paid by the group could prove a thorn in the side of the Malaysian owner and the agent trying to find a buyer for his site, Savills’ James Stevenson.
The dilemma, and registered valuer James probably knows this only too well, is that any buyer automatically might think that the $3737 per square metre paid by the Chinese is the going rate and run a mile.
The true situation might well be that the Malaysian seller, while naturally wanting to fare well, doesn’t expect his land to have trebled in value during his four-year tenure and has more modest price ambitions.
A sideline observer to the process could be the Sunland Group, which has a near 1.3ha site in the Varsity hub which appears to owe it north of $2000 per square metre.