More wealthy families snatch commercial property bargains

Australia’s wealthy families continue to pile into the commercial property sector in search of bargains, with the Roth and Roberts families the latest to swoop on bargains.

Andrew Roberts, whose family sold out of construction giant Multiplex in 2007 for $1.1 billion, is in due diligence to buy the Australian Red Cross Blood Services’s new headquarters in south Sydney.

The project is being developed by listed property company Goodman Group, which is trying to sell assets and reduce its debt. The purchase price is estimated to be around $70 million.

In Melbourne, the Roth family is set to pay around $65 million for a half share in an office building at 1 Spring Street in the central business district. The Australian Financial Review says the seller is a property fund run by listed property group Lend Lease.

These deals follow recent commercial property purchases of an office building in Geelong by the Laidlaw family, an Adelaide shopping centre by the Fitch family, and a Sydney office building by the Tieck family. 

Another legendary property bargain hunter, billionaire Lang Walker, continues to hunt for bargains. Walker says that while listed players such as the Goodman Group, Mirvac and Australand have stopped buying, there is plenty of “smart money” looking for bargains.

“There’s still more out there for well-priced acquisitions,” Walker told the AFR. “There’s not as much property as we thought, and I don’t think anything has gotten down to the ridiculous stage yet. I think we might see the market stabalise a bit.”

Yesterday, Walker Corporation started work on a new 19,000 square metre distribution centre in Ipswich, part of the company’s $1 billion industrial estate development.

Related stories:

• Commercial property values set to fall 40%
  
• Banks pulling back from commercial property sector
• Property prices will fall across the board; report