Developer Metro sells off Brisbane apartment site at 35 percent discount
Metro Property Development has sold a prime apartment development site in Brisbane for a huge 35 per cent discount after buying it for $20 million just two years back.
Metro bought the 1,890 sqm block on Manning Street in South Brisbane with plans to build a 30-storey tower with 380 apartments, according to The Australian Financial Review.
The what it purchased it for two years ago, in what is a clear sign of the apartment market turning.
The site was bought by local developer ARIA for $13 million.
Property Observer had reported earlier that the Brisbane apartment market is in decline.
This is the first major transaction to show such a dramatic fall in price.
Ironically Metro, co-founded by property identity David Devine, gamed the market in Brisbane three years ago when it booked a $24 million profit in just over six months by selling a separate site in South Brisbane to Chinese real estate giant R&F Properties.
That Hong Kong-listed, Guangzhou-based R&F paid $46 million for that site, the AFR said.
Metro managing director Luke Hartman didn’t give details on the latest Manning Street site sale, just saying the sale was part of a "reweighting of our national development site property portfolio".
"We are recycling capital into the Sydney and Melbourne acquisitions we have made," Hartman said.
He defended the discounted sale and added that the Brisbane market was slowing.
"We have traded seven sites in past three years for a minimum of double what we have paid for them. Both in Brisbane and Melbourne," he said.
The Manning site was being marketed through Colliers International and JLL.
On Metro’s other projects, he said they “have been settling well”.
“It takes longer to settle than usual but it's not all doom and gloom.”
Metro, which deferred the float of of its company two years ago, has developed thousands of apartments Australia wide and received financial backing from a range of groups such as Alceon and Credit Suisse.