Want more than a pint? There are pubs aplenty in this spring’s property market

For the past 15 years, the Grand has been cranking out Italian food at 333 Burnley Street off the suburb’s main thoroughfares.

Records show Zagg Grand, owned jointly by various members of the Zagame family, bought the pub for $3.625 million in 2014.

Built in 1888, the 780-square-metre pub is on a 647 square-metre plot of land on the corner of Bliss Street. It returns $262,631 a year on a five-year lease, with three more five-year options.

Vinci Carbone’s Frank Vinci and Joseph Carbone have the listing and are expecting offers in the $5 million range.

The listing follows two bumper deals. Former CUB boss Peter Filipovic and his partners Dave and Merv Shannon snapped up Bells Hotel at 198 Coventry Street in South Melbourne for $20 million.

JLL’s Will Connolly did the deal while closing another significant transaction – selling the Napier Hotel in Fitzroy for about $10 million.

The off-market deal brings an end to Guy Lawson’s 30 years at the helm of the non-pokies venue, which offers traditional pub cheer and classy food. The buyer is up-and-coming hospitality operator Baxter Pickard.

On High Street, Northcote (the world’s coolest retail strip), the building that houses Dante’s Cocktail Bar – winner of this year’s Australian Good Food Guide Readers’ Choice award – fetched $1.85 million on a tight yield of 4.4 per cent.

Gross Waddell ICR agents Andrew Greenway and Alex Ham sold 308-310 High Street to a local investor.

The Clifton Hotel at Kew Junction is in the hands of receivers after the collapse of the Sydney-based Adgemis group and has come back on the market. HTL Property’s Scott Callow and Andrew Joliffe are expecting about $8 million.

Out in the north-west, the 150-year-old Ball Court Hotel in Sunbury is expected to fetch about $14 million.

It recently scored a $4 million makeover and has a fresh 15-year lease to Australian Venue Co. The pub returns $800,000 a year in rent.

The listing is a speedy flip for the Hawthorn Brewing Company, which bought it last year from the listed-Hotel Property Investments group for $8.55 million.

Cushman & Wakefield’s Daniel Wolman, Oliver Hay, Leon Ma and Raphael Favas are handling expressions of interest.

Nearby in Rockbank, the Gamekeepers Inn at 1555 Melton Highway is up for grabs at around $4.5 million.

The vacant hotel is next door to prize-winning vineyard Witchmount Estate on a huge 8350 square metres of land. Maxwell Collins Commercial’s Mat George is taking inquiries.

Family-oriented

A local private investor has paid $17.4 million for Dandenong’s Family Court building in an off-market deal that delivered a rare premium for suburban office space.

Records show the court at 53-55 Robinson Street last changed hands in 2021 for $12 million, snapped up by Softmed’s Denis Midor.

The Family Court had recently merged with the Federal Court and had only a short lease term left on the three-storey building, which made some potential investors nervous.

There were no plans to move the court, however, which was built in 1983 and is undergoing a $6 million refurbishment, looking for a five-star green rating and five-star NABERS rating.

The 2729-square-metre building is on a 2371-square-metre site and returns $1.22 million a year in rent. That gives the deal a healthy 6.45 per cent.

It’s the only family court outside of William Street in the CBD and sold with a fresh 10-year lease – and two three-year options – to the federal government. The transaction was negotiated by Knight Frank agents Tom Ryan, Nick Bisset and Paul Lillis, with Charter Keck Cramer’s Lachlan Devine acting as acquisition manager.

King

In the CBD, a subsidiary of Singaporean investor Lian Beng is offloading the former Victoria University building on King Street with a permit for student accommodation.

The 13-storey office building at 225 King Street, on the corner of Lonsdale Street, has been vacant since the university moved into its new $385 million campus at 370 Lonsdale Street, developed by industry super fund manager ISPT.

SLB Development paid $35 million for the former Victoria University building in 2022 and last year obtained a dual permit for either a 431-bed project in a new building or a second 274-bed development in the repurposed office tower.

Cushman & Wakefield’s Oliver Hay, Daniel Wolman and Leon Ma of Cushman, and JLL’s Josh Rutman, Jesse Radisich, Jack Bergin and MingXuan Li have the listing. They’re expecting $40 million plus for the tower.

The 6286-square-metre building is on a 707-square-metre site and could remain office space. The CBD’s west end had consistently recorded the lowest office vacancy rates in the past three years, Hay said.

New research from CBRE shows there is a dearth of a student accommodation in the nation’s cities, and 180,000 new beds are needed to house university renters – about 10,000 of those in Melbourne.

Niagara rises

Around the corner, Niagara House, at 370 Little Bourke Street, is on the market for the first time since 1998, when it traded for $1.725 million.

Built in 1905, the property is on 329 square metres of land, with the historic Niagara and Warburton lanes bordering each flank.

The five-storey, 1330 square-metre building is fully leased, anchored by outdoor gear retailer MacPac on the ground floor and basement, and returns about $550,000 a year in rent.

Fitzroys agents Lewis Waddell, Mark Talbot and Ben Liu have the listing and expect more than $8.5 million.

Fitzroys’ latest edition of Walk the CBD shows vacancies have dropped again in the past year to 6.1 per cent from 8 per cent – falling from the 14.1 per cent recorded in 2023.

Qanstructive

Qanstruct’s old church office at 500 Burwood Road, Hawthorn, is on the market, seven years after the builder sold it to a Sydney-based Chinese investor for $9.85 million.

Qanstruct refurbished the decrepit Augustine Congregational Church about 20 years ago and sold it in 2018 with an eight-year leaseback, which runs out early next year.

In 2023, the company’s owners splashed out $17 million on 85-87 High Street at Kew Junction and embarked on a fresh renovation project. The builder is still paying rent on the empty church after recently moving into its new office.