Lloyd Williams picks a winner with $120m Flinders Street car park deal
BRW Rich Lister Lloyd Williams has sold one of Melbourne CBD’s biggest car parks to a private Hong Kong investor for $120 million.
The 16-level property at 114 Flinders Street is one of the crown jewels of Mr Williams’ property empire, bought in 2007 for $54.5 million. It has been sold on a tight yield of about 5 per cent.
That price reflects both the depth of demand in the market, which is pushing commercial property prices towards a peak, and the sharp yields typically struck to acquire the long-term returns delivered by off-street parking.
Mr Williams appointed CBRE agents Mark Wizel, Kiran Pillai and Lewis Tong, and Knight Frank’s Martin O’Sullivan and Paul Henley, to broker the property.
The car park at 114 Flinders Street. Photo: Luis Ascui
The car park at the city’s east end has five ground-level retail tenancies, and above that 1200 car bays over a series of levels.
Topping the tower are six levels of office space overlooking Flinders Street and the Yarra River.
The buyer is HK Realway, a private player that has been steadily accumulating a local portfolio. Two years ago the Hong Kong group bought a George Street office tower in Sydney from Abacus Property Group and its joint venture partner AM Alpha, with a knockout bid of $112.3 million.
For the Melbourne property, HK Realway, represented by Thomson Geer’s Eu Ming Lim, also moved quickly, lobbing in an unconditional bid after two rounds without further due diligence.
The Hong Kong platform bought a North Sydney office tower for about $58 million from CorVal in 2015.
It also owns the owns the Cinema Centre Car Park in the Sydney central business district.
Mr Williams is a Melbourne establishment figure and veteran property player who founded Hudson Conway in the 1970s and developed the Crown casino complex. He is even better known for his role in horse racing, owning a record five winners of the Melbourne Cup, including Almandin last year.
In August last year one of Singapore’s largest property developers, Wing Tai, acquired a seven-level car park further along Flinders Street for more than $31 million.
That transaction was struck on a tight investment yield of about 3 per cent, with the listed Singaporean group paying about $100,000 per bay.
In January Mr Williams sold the Southbank headquarters of Hudson Conway for $11 million to a mainland Chinese company.
That property had development approval for a 16-level residential tower of 91 apartments.
