Jeff Xu buys Glen Waverley school for c$23 million
Jeff Xu’s Golden Age Group has paid about $23 million for a 1.65 hectare residential development site in Melbourne’s south east Glen Waverley.
The deal for 583 Ferntree Gully Road came a month after the local investor and developer, with Time and Place, sold an East Melbourne office on a funds through basis, for $328 million.
Last June Golden Age paid $40.5 million for 130 Little Collins Street – a low-rise office on 651 square metres of land offered with a permit for a 26-storey hotel by Uniting Church Synod of Victoria after 60 years.
Elsewhere in Glen Waverley, at shopping complex The Glen, Mr Xu is constructing 555 apartments within three towers in conjunction with the site owner, Vicinity Centres.
Last month, residential agents Marcus Chiminello and Nicole French from Marshall White listed the c$3.8 million sub-penthouse (pictured, right) of a residential skyscraper Golden Age Group recently completed at 466 Collins Street in the Melbourne CBD.
The Ferntree Gully Road block
East of Monash Freeway, near the busy Springvale Road intersection, the near-rectangle shaped 583 Ferntree Gully Road block was offloaded by not-for-profit group Child Family Care which uses it for education purposes (and will continue to occupy a part of it following the recent sale).
The parcel has 161 metres of street frontage and abuts residential zones to its other three sides.
It is about 200 metres from Brandon Park Shopping Centre.
Marketed for its potential to make way for a townhouses and apartments, aged care accommodation providers were also expected to show an interest in the block.
CBRE’s Mark Wizel, Julian White and Chao Zhang with Vinci Carbone’s Frank Vinci and Joseph Carbone represented Child Family Care.
“The key here was a site with enormous development potential in one of Melbourne’s most dynamic residential growth zones which has seen an extraordinary 16 per cent growth in the median house and unit price over the 12 months to February,” Mr Wizel said.
The broker added the result was excellent “in the most uncertain market we have ever seen”.
“What we do know is that there is a significantly large group of developers looking at new opportunities – the strong response to the campaign bore that out – with the knowledge that underlying fundamentals including population growth will ultimately drive demand for new product.
“How much we can take from each sale as a guide to the future is really unknown, but given the very good response to this sale we may see a surprising degree of activity from developers in acquiring sites in preparation for an `inevitable’ upturn.’’
