Billboard bonanza: Design-led Northern Beaches complex lists for $20m-plus

The multi-tenanted property at 198 Condamine Street has been listed for sale via expressions of interest through Upstate Commercial.

Held by the same local family for more than 65 years, the 2552-square-metre land parcel features 105 metres of frontage along the A8 arterial, one of the main transport routes connecting the Northern Beaches with Sydney’s CBD, just half an hour’s drive away.

The rooftop billboard, erected in 1986, proved a prescient move.

“It’s the most trafficked area for anyone coming or going to the Northern Beaches,” says listing agent Vincent West, who is marketing the property alongside Upstate’s Oliver Rosati. “The billboard brings in $300,000, and there are three phone towers on the roof that bring in circa $140,000 a year.”

The telecommunications infrastructure – leased to Telstra, Vodafone and Optus with options extending to 2041 – provides stable, long-term income, alongside long-term leaseholders.

“They call them Class A phone tower sites, which means they need that location,” West says. “They can sometimes reposition towers, but this is considered a top-tier phone tower site.”

All together, the 3643-square metre building generates a net income of $1,365,586 plus GST, with about $440,000 derived from the rooftop infrastructure alone.

From car yard to design destination

While the property currently presents as a polished, design-led showroom and commercial complex with 46 car parks, the site has undergone significant transformation over the past decade.

A tenanted car yard once occupied part of the land before the vendor – an architect-builder – progressively redeveloped the holding between 2016 and 2021 to combine several titles into one.

“They’ve taken the building through various iterations to where it stands now,” West says.

The front two-storey showroom component was completed around 2019 and incorporates zoned air-conditioning, enhanced insulation and 20-millimetre solar-reflective glazing to reduce traffic noise. A three-storey Hayes Street-facing building also underwent electrical and glazing upgrades. Provision has been made for future solar panel installation, with wiring and inverters already in place.

Anchor tenant and diversified mix

Coco Republic, formerly Town & Country Living, occupies the flagship 2949-square-metre showroom under a 10-year lease to 2031 with a further 10-year option.

Operating for more than four decades, the national furniture brand’s Balgowlah store includes indoor and outdoor collections, lighting, a gallery space, an interior design service, and its L’Americano Espresso Bar cafe.

The company has worked on commercial projects across the Northern Beaches, including interior work at the Manly Pacific Hotel.

Other tenants include Bulldog Gym Balgowlah, which occupies 264 square metres on a lease to mid-2027, a bespoke antique furniture trader, coffee machine service company Espresso Services Plus, and a 46-square-metre vacant office suite.

A 93-square-metre two-bedroom residential apartment above the showroom provides additional diversity and is currently leased at $590 a week.

Strategic retail hub

The property sits within a tightly held retail and bulky goods precinct, opposite Freedom Furniture and next door to a new King Living showroom, with Bunnings, Harvey Norman, Woolworths, Aldi, and Balgowlah Village shopping centre nearby.

It is located about 2.5 kilometres from Manly Beach and 950 metres from Manly Golf Club, within one of Sydney’s most affluent coastal catchments where the median house price sits at $2.845 million.

West says early buyer interest has been “outstanding” with more than 110 inquiries in the first 10 days.

“It’s a good building with a very diverse set of income out of it – strong multiple tenancies,” he says.

The expressions-of-interest campaign closes at 2pm on March 11.