Fast cars and motoring memorabilia: MCG rebuilder's man cave for sale

Sydney Morning Herald

14 hours ago

The two-storey 980 sq m office at No.24, opposite Luna Park and the Palais, is down the road from Saint Moritz and the Esplanade Hotel.
Its level-one boardroom boasts a half-pipe skateboard ramp which would make for interesting meetings. Once Oakley Sunglasses' head office, the office was most recently tenanted by cannabis distributor Releaf.
Savills agents Linc Reynolds and Tim Grant are selling the property and expecting around $10 million. 'This is not an everyday building – it's so iconic,' Reynolds said.
The building occupies the entire 748 sq m site and has a flexible General Residential zoning, suggesting it may not be an office for long.
The Mill
Geelong's entrepreneurial Hamilton Group has snapped up The Mill on the Barwon River in Newtown.
The historic mill at 403 Pakington Street is in the artsy precinct along the river on a large 29,280 sq m site.
Records show Cameron Hamilton put a caveat over the title late last month.
Cushman & Wakefield's Oliver Hay, Hamish Burgess, Joe Kairouz and Leon Ma ran the expressions of interest campaign and were expecting more than $30 million for the property. They declined to comment on the buyer or the price, but local sources suggest it was close to the asking price.
The property came with planning approval for a mixed-use development with 314 apartments and 29 townhouses. The Hamilton Group has a solid track record restoring historic properties in Geelong.
Strata office
Post election, city-based owner-occupiers are back in the market for their little piece of the CBD.
Recent deals include the office of retired criminal lawyer Bernie 'the Attorney' Ballmer, on level 4 of 116-120 Hardware Street.
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A wealthy individual is understood to have paid $1.53 million for the 222 sq m penthouse office and will move out of the blue-chip office complex at 333 Collins Street.
Cushman & Wakefield agents Anthony Kirwan and Jack Cooper handled the campaign and declined to comment on the buyer's identity. Records show Ballmer paid $605,000 for the space in 2005.
The team, including George Davies, also sold a 358 sq m penthouse office at levels 14-15 at 50 Market Street for $3 million – representing a rate of $8380 a sq m.
The new owner is a migration agent already leasing space on Collins Street, Davies said. They have sold 10 offices worth around $20 million in the past six weeks, with 80 per cent of the buyers, owner-occupiers, he said.
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That figure will be tested next month when an office on level 7/343 Little Collins Street goes to auction.
The 168 sq m office is leased to a private college and has a 9B permit allowing for educational use. The price is expected to be around $1.1 million – a bumper yield of around 8 per cent based on the rent of $89,198 a year. Cooper and Kirwan are handling the auction.
Meanwhile, there are two vacant offices up for sale in the mid-century modern Mering House at 278 Collins Street.
Kirwan is quoting around $2.75 million for the 336 sq m office on level 3, which last changed hands in 2018 for $2.5 million.
Upstairs, the vacant level six is also for sale but for around $3.2 million through CBRE agents Alex Brierley, Nathan Mufale and Jing Jun Heng. It was sold in 2018 for $2.85 million.
Strip retail
Three shops in the inner north found keen buyers at auction last week. The old Commonwealth Bank branch at 209-211 Smith Street, now leased by furniture retailer Tait, sold for $6.5 million on a sharp 3.8 per cent yield.
Records show Sydney businessman Richard Munao, founder of the Cult design group, has put a caveat over the property. A nice little bargain – it sold in 2015 for $7.1 million.
Stonebridge agents Rorey James, Nic Hage and Ian Lam handled the sale, which attracted eight bidders.
On Brunswick Street, they also engineered the sale of the freehold leased to the China Bar at 325 Brunswick Street for $2.9 million on a yield of 6.72 per cent. It fetched $1.86 million in 2007.
The price reflected a land rate of $16,384 per sq m, the highest land rate achieved for Brunswick Street in over a decade, James said.
The buyer, an interstate South Australian investor, was one of the underbidders of Stonebridge's third deal, the Coburg NAB branch at 406-408 Sydney Road.
The bank sold under the hammer for $2.71 million, a yield of 4.98 per cent with bidding from six parties.
It had been owned by the same family for decades and the buyer was sourced from Stonebridge's Asia Practice team.
Finally sold
A long-held property on Hoddle Street, close to the entrance of the Eastern Freeway, has finally sold after two years on the market.
The Commercial 2-zoned site at 294-296 Hoddle Street is on 1864 sq m and was pitched as a potential development site worth $15 million.
However, the cement works between the showroom, leased to Bathroom Direct, and the railway line, made that proposition tricky.
The area between busy Hoddle Street and the railway is full of low-rise showrooms and industrial buildings.
Cushman & Wakefield's Leon Ma, Daniel Wolman, Raphael Favas and Oliver Hay ran the campaign. The price is understood to be close to the original quote, but they declined to comment.