Marprop buys North Sydney office tower for $20 million
Sydney-based real estate firm Marprop has snapped up an office building at 88 Walker Street, North Sydney, for about $20 million.
The company exchanged contracts on the nine-storey property with the seller, Singapore developer Macly Group, on Wednesday after several months of due diligence.
This is the second time the building has sold in two years, after Korean-backed company Eastmark Holdings was forced to offload it in 2014 to Macly.
Eastmark Holdings had owned 88 Walker Street and the adjoining North Sydney Shopping World at 1 Denison Street with plans to develop them into a 30-storey office tower.
But 88 Walker Street, which also has a development approval for a 108-room hotel, went to Macly in 2014 for $12.2 million, and Winten Property Group snapped up 1 Denison Street for $80 million.
Winten is now developing the site into North Sydney’s largest office building, at 53,800 square metres, alongside the proposed Victoria Cross Metro Station and has secured Nine Network as its anchor tenant.
It is understood Marprop is likely to develop the 2987-square-metre building on a 607-square-metre site at 88 Walker Street site into an office building, instead of a hotel, given the scarcity of office space as metro and residential development take hold in North Sydney.
Colliers International’s Jon Chomley, Tom Appleby and Raymond Tran, and Knight Frank’s Dominic Ong closed the deal but have declined to comment.
Marprop, a property investment, development and advisory firm, also owns another North Sydney building, Number 2 Elizabeth Plaza, which it bought from Altis Property Partners for $45 million in 2014.
Last year Marprop sold an office building in Gordon, in Sydney’s north, to retail group Aldi for $26.5 million.
