Bondi Beach boarding house hits the market as demand runs hot on Sydney's seaside streets
A boarding house on Bondi’s Campbell Parade is on the market at a time when commercial properties along the coveted beachfront strip, and other beachfront streets in the eastern suburbs, are selling for big money.
The building, at 128-132 Campbell Parade, Bondi Beach, has been listed just months after the sale of two other buildings on the strip – the Bondi Backpacker’s that sold for more than $18 million and next door’s Bates Milk Bar site for $19.12 million in September.
The 417-square-metre property is currently home to 14 boarding rooms and two street-level shops – currently leased to Bondi Surf Seafoods and Souvenir Plus – but is being sold on its potential to redevelop the site.
The 417 square metre site sits next to the former Bates Milk Bar, which sold for $19.2 million last year. Photo: Supplied
Listing agent Matt Pontey said that the owners of 128-132 Campbell Parade had decided the time was right to capitalise on Bondi’s beachfront revitalisation.
“[They] want to capitalise on the great results achieved recently,” Mr Pontey said.
Mr Pontey would not quote a guide for the sale, but Colliers is citing the Bates Milk Bar and the backpackers as comparable sales.
Miron Solomons, Colliers Director, Sydney Metropolitan Sales sold the former Bates Milk Bar at auction to Bondi aficionados Allen Linz’s Rebel Property Group, Capit.el Group’s Eduard Litver and Gil Baron in September.
Local businessman Theo Onisforou was a notable – and vocal – underbidder.
Mr Pontey’s father, Craig Pontey of Ray White Double Bay, sold the Bondi Backpackers to the Millett family in November, who plan to turn it into another property in their WakeUp! premium hostel group.
Mr Pontey and Mr Solomons are citing the completion of The Pacific, a mixed-use conversion of the former Swiss Hotel also on Campbell Parade, as well as controversial plans to rejuvenate the Bondi Pavilion across the road, as reasons for the reinvigoration of Bondi’s beachfront property market.
“With the recent completion of the Pacific and growing support from Waverley Council and the wider community for new transport and community facilities in the area, this has seen Bondi’s commercial market soar as the beachside community’s future vision becomes clearer,” Mr Pontey said.
Both agents were expecting interest from local and offshore investors.
“Bondi Beach commercial is considered some of the most highly sought after in Australia and we expect high levels of interest from high net worth private investors and boutique investment funds, both onshore and offshore, looking to acquire a significant freehold at Sydney’s most iconic beachfront,” Mr Solomons said.
But it’s not just Bondi where beachfront commercial properties are fetching bullish prices.
The sale of a fish and chip shop in neighbouring Bronte recently set a suburb price record, when measured in value per square metre.
The tiny 46-square-metre shop sold for $2,385,000 or $51,847 a square metre, beating out the figure for Bronte’s highest house sale, $21,430 a square metre – set in 2013 for a $16.5 million mansion.
The Bondi property at 128-132 Campbell Parade will be offered through an expressions of interest campaign closing on May 31, through Colliers International.
