Qanstruct sells unique office built into a church
Design and construction company Qanstruct has sold one of the country’s most unusual offices to a Chinese buyer.
The former Congregational Church, built in 1881 at 500 Burwood Highway was listed with an eight-year leaseback.
With a net annual rental return of $500,000, the asset traded at auction today for $9.851 million.
Four parties made 108 bids for the asset which traded for a record rate of $13,979 per square metre of lettable area – smashing the suburb record of $10,578 set earlier this year when 1 Oxley Road sold for $15 million against price expectations of $9 million.
Opposite Swinburne University, the 1998 square metre site with 21 car parks offers a lettable building area of 714 sqm.
Once used as a Sunday school, Qanstruct refitted the church into a workplace 15 years ago.
CBRE promoted the area’s low office vacancy rate (sub 3 per cent) as part of its marketing campaign. The brokers representing Qanstruct managing director Mark Ruff, were Mark Wizel, Josh Rutman, Lewis Tong and Scott Orchard.
The deal comes four months after the agency – with a conjunctional broker – sold a Hawthorn office at 1 Oxley Road for $15 million against price expectations of about $9 million.
One of the vendors of 1 Oxley Road – Probuild founding director Phil Mehrten, last week listed for sale Prahran’s former post office in Greville Street – now a commercial investment with ground floor retail space.
