Capital Gain
Sydney-based fashion label Carla Zampatti has snapped up a piece of Brighton’s blue-chip Church Street strip in a $5.8 million off-market deal that secures it control for its retail operations.
Records show Carla Zampatti Pty Ltd has settled on 63 Church Street, a shop most recently leased to Accent Group-owned Nude Lucy, in a sale that reflects a skinny 3 per cent yield. It’s next door to Scanlan & Theodore and near the new Mecca store at No. 58.
Carla Zampatti previously leased a boutique across the street at 44c Church Street but is expected to move into the new 300-square-metre shop.
The company is owned by the late fashion designer’s children – Wentworth MP Allegra Spender and her siblings Bianca Spender and Alexander Schuman. Schuman runs the show.
They will add this shop to their tiny Melbourne portfolio. Back in 1984, Carla Zampatti paid $299,000 for 1104-1106 High Street, Armadale, where both the Zampatti and Bianca Spender boutiques trade.
The price on the Brighton deal could establish a new benchmark, with a land rate of $25,328 a sq m and a building rate of $19,300 a sq m.
It’s understood Stonebridge Property Group handled the transaction. While the agents declined to comment in detail on the deal, they noted the “interstate buyer” had been looking for property on Church Street for more than three years.
Records show the vendor was another ragtrader with historical roots – the Munro family which owns the Munro Footwear Group.
The Zampatti fashion empire is underpinned by a property portfolio heavily weighted towards Sydney, where the company was founded 60 years ago.
It includes the Carla Zampatti Building at 439-441 Kent Street in Sydney’s CBD, commercial buildings in Alexandria and Waterloo, and shops in Bay Street, Double Bay; Military Road, Mosman; and Unley Road, Malvern, in Adelaide. Capital Gain requested some clarity on the size of the Zampatti portfolio but got no response.
Auction action
Elsewhere on Church Street, two recent auctions fetched $5,775,000 over a one-week period.
Bidding between three parties pushed the Bailey Nelson outlet at 36 Church Street to $4.01 million on a sharp 3.9 per cent yield.
Fitzroys’ agents Mark Talbot, Tom Fisher and Ben Liu ran the August auction.
Then last week, Talbot and Fisher auctioned No. 128, which fetched $1,765,000, on a yield of 3.6 per cent.
A local Brighton investor bought that property, beating three other bidders. The 20-year lease to Foxy Nails is up for renewal in March 2029.
According to Fitzroys’ most recent Walk the Strip report, Church Street’s vacancy rate is humming along at 1.4 per cent, the tightest in the city.
Flat out
Sydney buyers spending big in Melbourne have been a theme all year. While Melburnians keep their wallets closed as they complain of taxes, buyers from NSW are making successful moves on properties south of the border.
In one of the most recent cases, Sydney buyers bought most of the flats in a portfolio of 11 buildings put up for sale by the families of the original 1960s builders.
Stonebridge agents Max Warren, Dylan Kilner and Chao Zhang did the deals, selling the lot to seven buyers, five of them from Sydney.
“Buyers from Sydney are pricing Melbourne against their own market and reaching a consistent conclusion – they see entry pricing that no longer exists in NSW,” Kilner said.
“Priced out of Sydney, they are treating Melbourne and Victorian real estate as the alternative. That combination is bringing them south, and in most cases they are ready to act now. The urgency is the part vendors should note,” he said.
The 11 blocks of flats, located mostly in the north and north-western suburbs, fetched a total of $39.01 million in an off-market transaction that was completed before an advertising campaign even started.
“The first offer we received was a single buyer wanting the whole portfolio, essentially at the reserve price. We ran a five-week off-market process instead. The vendors are more than $1.84 million better off, and every reserve was met or exceeded,” Warren said.
During the campaign, the agents picked up a further three blocks from different vendors who also wanted to sell. The 14 blocks fetched a total $48.06 million.
The largest single sale was 39 Kent Street, Ascot Vale, a 24-unit block on 1315 sq m which fetched $7.03 million.
Seven blocks in Noble Park, in the south-eastern suburbs, sold for $21.43 million and three blocks in Brunswick fetched a further $10.57 million.
Art deco offering
Art deco fan Peter Mitrakas is having another crack at selling his former bank building in Albert Park Village.
Last time it hit the market in 2019, the building at 95-97 Dundas Place had recently lost its long-term tenant, the Commonwealth Bank, but Woolworths has since opened a Metro supermarket there.
The supermarket has three years left to run on the seven-year lease, but there are four five-year options.
Designed by inter-war architect Best Overend in the 1930s, the two-storey building is on 380 sq m of land.
Mitrakas bought the building from the CBA in 1990 for $985,000 during one of the early waves of bank branch sell-offs.
MAKER Property’s Raphael Favas and Lemon Baxter’s Peter Sprekos have the listing and expect it to fetch more than $7.4 million.
The bustling village is likely to get a few more residents. A trio of shops across the street at 146-150 Bridport Street was bought by Trent Skurrie’s Jacmax Developments for a total $8.65 million in 2022 and 2024.
Next door to the majestic four-storey 1880s-era Biltmore building, the new residential development will retain the historic facade, but the extensive rear will be developed as a six-storey building with nine apartments.
Tudor Inn
Cheltenham’s Tudor Inn Hotel has finally sold – property investor and hospo veteran George Koumantatakis has snapped it up for $11.5 million.
Records show a Koumantatakis-owned company called Amalfi Heights Co No.2 settled on the hotel in July in an off-market deal.
The pub, at 1281 Nepean Highway, is leased to Endeavour’s ALH Hotels until November 2028, although there are options extending to 2068.
Pub industry gossip suggests ALH might not be taking up those options. While Endeavour has flagged a renovation strategy for its hotels business, it’s not talking about outright closures.
The 2152 sq m pub comes with a slew of bars and lounges, a bottleshop, TAB and 56 gaming machines. It’s on a 4839 sq m site with 60 car parks.
There are some heritage protections on the 155-year-old pub, which limits redevelopment.
Stonebridge agent Kevin Tong, who did the deal with Nic Hage and Rorey James, said the buyer recognised “the longer-term value of the underlying landholding and Cheltenham location despite the shorter remaining lease term”.
The property last changed hands in 2021 during a string of bumper pub deals. Pub landlord ALE sold it to Golden Sun Investments for $15.66 million on an extremely tight 3.79 per cent yield. Too tight perhaps as the new price came at a 26 per cent discount. Ouch!
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