Real Estate News

WHILE attention in Geelong’s this week has circled the ‘approved-by-stealth’ public-private housing redevelopment of the city’s former TAFE site, another high profile property - given the green light last year to become one of the federal government’s 80,000 social and affordable new dwellings – failed to sell at auction.

Grey concrete silos at 46 – 48 Mercer Street, at the corner of Roy Street, and near the town centre – has now been listed for private sale through Colliers International at $1.95 million.

A 40-unit affordable housing development has been approved to be developed within the walls of the high-rise silos, prominent on the drive in to Geelong.

The Rudd government aims to substantially boost the number of social and affordable houses nationally by 2012.

CBRE has poached rival, former Jones Lang LaSalle suburban office director Richard Height, to work at its Mulgrave office.

Mr Height, who prior to joining JLL in 1996, was employed at McGees, has focussed in recent years on project office leasing, including projects for Colonial First State and Gandel, Deal Corporation and the Genser family.

PRIVATE health insurer Defence Health can expect to make $6.5 million from the sale of a prominent St Kilda Road office within walking distance to the Flinders Street station.

Defence Health is the latest in a string of companies to list formerly owner-occupied buildings for sale, while it rents elsewhere.

Defence Health’s outgoing office three-level office at 344 St Kilda Road, opposite the Shrine of Remembrance is being marketed by Colliers International’s Ben Christie.

IF you told a Valuer ten years ago that land values around a rundown former hospital 17 kilometers north of Melbourne could fetch $430 per square metre, they’d have probably laughed.

But that’s exactly what Queensland-based developer Sunland has been able to achieve for land at a picturesque point within the 104-hectare former Janefield Hospital site, in Bundoora – which first sold to developers seven years ago for just $20 per square metre of land.

A 31.47 hectare island in the Gippsland Lakes has hit the market, and is expected to sell for about $2.8 million.

Flinders Island has been operating as a resort foe the past 30 years, and is being sold by Computershare founder and chairman Chris Morris, and co-owner Andrew Henderson, who have owned it for about 20 years.

The property includes a golf course, swimming pool, tennis courts and a 30-person ferry, as well as a homestead.

BOURKE Street’s prominent former Emporio Shoes building has hit the rental market.

The 97-year old four-level retail premises, formerly known as the Francis & Co building at 280 – 282 Bourke Street, includes 74 square metres of ground floor space, and another 465 square metres in the basement and on upper levels.

Emporio shoes traded from the building (formerly occupied by the Body Shop) for about fifteen years until its parent company, the Figgins Group, went into administration in 2009.