Aged care

A Macau-based investor has swooped on a Moonee Ponds office building leased to a key federal department.

Records show investment firm Charter Hall sold the building at 1 Dean Street for $38 million to MP Investments Management, at the end of July.

The company is owned by the Ho family, which last spent $40 million in 2018, buying an office at 454 Collins Street.

Most of the MP Investments Management shareholders are based in Macau and include racing car driver Henry Ho. They are not related to the multi-branched casino-owning billionaire Ho family.

The Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment signed a 12-year lease on the 7104 square-metre four-storey office in 2022.

Purpose built for Foxtel more than 20 years ago, it’s on a large 6640 square-metre parcel of land, half of which is currently used for car parking.

Charter Hall’s Direct PFA Fund tried to sell it in 2018 for $45 million but Foxtel’s soon-to-expire lease put the kybosh on any deals.

Charter Hall also once held the nearby Australian Tax Office building on Gladstone Street but sold it 10 years ago for $83 million. Sydney-based Marshall Investments picked it up for $126 million last year.

The off-market campaign was pitched at a limited pool of potential investors with Cushman & Wakefield’s Daniel Wolman, Oliver Hay, Leon Ma and Gross Waddell ICR’s Raff De Luise on the case.

City fringe

Hot on the heels of Jetstar’s Collingwood headquarters hitting the market comes its neighbour at 103 Victoria Parade.

The three-storey laboratory, leased by Melbourne Pathology, was purchased by Australian Unity’s Healthcare Property Trust in 2016 for $45 million.

The building is on Australian Unity’s books at $58.5 million but is tipped to fetch more than $60 million. It’s in a city-fringe location undergoing rapid commercial and hospital-related redevelopment and could take a new 12-storey building.

The 5891-square-metre lab and offices was built by Melbourne Pathology in 1994 on 4069 square metres of land purchased from Carlton & United Breweries.

The pathology company, part of the listed Sonic Healthcare group, is believed to have bought Costco’s Docklands premises on Footscray Road, with plans to build or fit out new laboratories and offices.

Sonic has not responded to queries about the purchase and its lease on the Collingwood office does not expire until 2028.

The expressions-of-interest campaign is expected to close a couple of weeks after the Jetstar campaign. Combined, the two sites consist of nearly one hectare of contiguous prime land.

Colliers agents Anna Cavar, Ian Sanders and John Marasco are handling inquiries.

Henkell Brothers is selling Jetstar’s Collingwood HQ with a $65 million-plus price tag. Qantas’ budget subsidiary also has three years left on its long-term lease.

The properties are on the corner of Wellington Street, around the corner from Gurner’s recently completed Victoria & Vine apartment project. St Vincent’s Hospital and the Australian Catholic University are also expanding their holdings in the precinct.

The Jetstar listing is being handled by Colliers’ Jozef Dickinson, Matthew Stagg and Philip Heberling, as well as CBRE’s Trent Hobart, Nathan Mufale and David Minty.

Inner north

Elsewhere in Collingwood, another of the suburb’s old rag traders is selling up, at 53-57 Cambridge Street.

Vendor and current occupier M.Recht Accessories has operated from the address for more than 50 years, selling textile products to the fashion accessories industry.

The two-level showroom is on an 811-square-metre parcel of land with frontages to Cambridge, Derby and Langridge streets.

It’s across the street from the 14-level apartment tower developed by Cbus Property in 2019 and close to a host of other new office and residential projects.

Cushman & Wakefield’s Daniel Wolman, Raphael Favas, Hamish Burgess and Leon Ma are handling the campaign and expect more than $11 million.

Also poised for redevelopment is a site in nearby Fitzroy at 329 Napier Street, which is also understood to have sold recently for $11 million.

Records show a company linked to developer Cobild has recently put a caveat on the 1071-square-metre property.

Alexander Robertson agents Warwick Bramich and Kristian Peatling, with Cushman & Wakefield’s Anthony Kirwan and Hay negotiated the deal. They declined to comment.

Aged care

Private aged care operator Infinite Care has snapped up its first Victorian property buying a vacant facility in Windsor for $11.75 million.

The deal reflected a 16 per cent increase on the $9.75 million price paid by investors in 2022.

The former aged care facility at 241 Dandenong Road was last operated by Estia Health.

CBRE’s Australian Healthcare and Social Infrastructure team of Sandro Peluso, Marcello Caspani-Muto and Jimmy Tat managed the sale.

Infinite Care is planning to open a new 60-bed home on the site mid-2025. It is also opening a new 177-bed home in Knoxfield later that year.

Meanwhile, north of the city, a vacant site at 800 Plenty Road, Reservoir, which has a permit for a six-storey aged-care development, has sold to an offshore group.

Zoned Commercial 1, the site is part of the sprawling Summer Hill retail precinct, high on the hill overlooking the eastern suburbs and a short tram ride away to La Trobe University.

It was previously owned by aged care developer and operator Japara, which was bought by Calvary in 2021.

Savills agents Julian Heatherich, Benson Zhou and James Latos handled the transaction.