Greenland Holding Group Co., one of the largest Chinese investors in the U.S., sold about A$275 million ($250 million) of apartments at its first Australian project as buyers snapped up almost all of the units offered.
The state-owned developer sold 241 of 250 apartments released in the first stage of Greenland Centre, the 66-floor central Sydney tower expected to be the tallest in the city, said David Milton, managing director for residential projects at selling agent CBRE Group Inc. The most expensive was a three-bedroom unit on the 55th floor, which went for A$3.7 million to a Chinese buyer living in Australia, he said.
“We had enormous interest, about 4,000 in the four to five weeks leading up to it,” Sydney-based Milton said by telephone today. “This has been one of the most highly anticipated projects, with one of the highest level of inquiries that we’ve had.”
Greenland has invested more than A$1 billion on sites in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia’s two most-populous cities and the areas that are seeing the highest level of demand from mainland buyers. The company joins Chinese developers, including Dalian Wanda Group and ABP (China) Holdings Group Ltd., which are moving overseas as the government maintains curbs to cool the housing market at home.
Apartment Demand
Apartment prices in Sydney jumped 11 percent this year to Nov. 30, and climbed 7.2 percent in Melbourne, the fastest in the country, according to the RP Data-Rismark home value index.
Lend Lease Group, Australia’s biggest listed property developer, in August sold all 159 waterfront apartments in the first stage of its Barangaroo redevelopment in Sydney’s center within 3.5 hours of their release. The company received more than 6,500 inquiries, with sales including a two-level, four-bedroom penthouse for A$10.5 million, it said in a statement at the time.
About a fifth of the sales were to buyers from the mainland, Paul Shaw, head of Lend Lease’s apartment business, said in an interview.
Greenland began sales simultaneously in Sydney, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore over the weekend for the apartments, whose prices start at A$528,000 for a studio, Milton said. About a quarter were sold to overseas buyers, he said.
A date hasn’t been announced for the release of the second stage with 220 apartments, he said.
Greenland’s Plans
The start of construction depends on the development approval, which the company is in the process of obtaining, Sherwood Luo, managing director of Greenland Australia, the company’s Sydney-based subsidiary, said last month.
Greenland plans to build about 1,000 apartments on its first Melbourne site, which it agreed to buy last week from Racing Victoria.
The Shanghai-based company said in 2010 that it will invest 30 billion yuan ($4.9 billion) to build a 606-meter (1,988-foot) skyscraper in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
The 660-meter Ping An Finance Center in the southern city of Shenzhen will be China’s tallest building when it is completed 2016, according to the skyscraper center database of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. China’s tallest building currently is the 492-meter Shanghai World Financial Center.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nichola Saminather in Sydney at nsaminather1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andreea Papuc at apapuc1@bloomberg.net
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