The Shark Fin restaurant is in the heart of Chinatown. Photo: Supplied

Melbourne's Shark Fin House snapped up for $14.5m

Larry Schlesinger|May 16, 2019

Malaysian investors have bought Shark Fin House, home to one of Melbourne’s best-known Chinese restaurants, for $14.5 million.

The sale price reflected the extent to which commercial property values have risen in the Melbourne city centre in recent years.

The four-storey building at 131 – 135 Little Bourke Street – which has been a Shark Fin restaurant since 1989 – last changing hands for $7.5 million in June 2016 on a yield of 5.5 per cent.

The latest sale was struck on a yield of 3.6 per cent with title deeds showing a caveat was placed over the property by Mee Fong Yen’s MKS Empire.

The 928 square metre property on a 288 square metre site, built in 1987, was sold with a 10-year lease to the Shark Fin Group signed last year.

The group, which specialises in authentic Cantonese cuisine, operates four venues across Melbourne, according to its website.

The vendors were a consortium of local investors trading as Mayfair FX Pty Ltd, Polybest Pty Ltd and SY and Wong Pty Ltd.

Selling agents CBRE said it was the first retail property priced between $5 million and $20 million to change hands in the Melbourne CBD this year.

“The lease tenure and Chinatown location were key attractions for the successful purchaser, as highlighted by the sale price, which represents a 95 per cent uplift from when the property last traded in 2012 for $7.5 million,” said Julian White, who negotiated the sale with colleagues Lewis Tong, Chao Zhang and Leon Ma.

“This is the only sale of the year thus far of a retail building in the $5 million to $20 million price bracket, which had led to significant pent-up interest from local and offshore investors for quality Melbourne CBD investment opportunities.”

In contrast, he said seven Melbourne CBD retail transactions totalling $65.2 million were negotiated in the first four months of 2018.

CBRE Asian services desk director Lewis Tong said the sale of Shark Fin House highlighted the ongoing Asian investor interest in Melbourne investment opportunities.
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“Melbourne has traditionally been an attractive market for Malaysian investors, with an affinity which dates back to the 1950s, when many Malaysian overseas students began coming to Melbourne to complete their tertiary education,” Mr Tong said.

“Changes in the political environment in Malaysia have driven heightened interest in Australian investment opportunities in the past 12 months, with circa 15 per cent of our property transactions during this period involving purchasers of Malaysian origin, and a further 40 per cent of our sales involving buyers from other parts of Asia.”