Syndicate buys farm near Geelong as future landbank
A local family syndicate has snapped up Scarborough House, a modern rural mansion on 57 hectares near Geelong as a future residential land banking opportunity
The property at 205 Coriyule Road in Curlewis, 16 kilometres east of the Geelong CBD on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula, sold for around its asking price of $4.5 million.
It includes a two-storey four-bedroom homestead in the style of a modern Tuscan Villa, with a theatre room, pool and spa and a large shed, and offers sweeping views of the You Yangs across Corio Bay
It sold through Ken Drysdale of Elders Geelong, who labelled it a “significant sale for the Bellarine Peninsula”.
“The family will initially live there and continue to run its as a cropping property,” Mr Drysdale said. He said longer-term it had been acquired as a land banking opportunity.
Geelong, about an hour from Melbourne, is one of Victoria’s fastest growing new housing regions with a number of big land-subdivision projects underway by Stockland, Villawood Properties, ID_Land and others.
The most recent valuer-general’s A Guide to Property Values report showed that over 2016, Victorian farm prices rose by 7.4 per cent on average compared with a 5.8 per cent rise in the median Melbourne house price and a 1.4 per cent rise in Melbourne units.
Some of this increase can be attributed to the record prices paid for farms on Melbourne’s urban fringe by property developers and land bankers for future conversion to residential housing lots.
The area has also attracted a fair amount of rural investment recently.
In July, a cashed-up Melbourne family snapped up picturesque Geelong rural holding Barwon Heights for more than $10 million. The elevated 410-hectare grazing and cropping property across 10 titles at 65 Atkins Road in Winchelsea sold above expectations of more than $9 million, also through Elders.
In May, a 12.1-hectare amalgamation of six adjoining farms in Ocean Grove sold for $11.1 million.
The vendors bought Scarborough House in 1999 and decided to sell it to downsize after their children had moved out.
