Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s Melbourne HQ could fetch one of highest sale prices of 2024
Alibaba Melbourne home for sale
The Collins St home of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is up for sale, with the prospect it could be one of the city’s priciest sales of the year.
The 411 Collins St, Melbourne, building has been owned by a private Melbourne investor since 2020, but had previously been owned by former Carlton Football Club president and Crawfords Group managing director Mark LoGiudice.
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The 1930s-built property is one of the well-heeled boulevards best known gothic buildings and was historically home to the Commercial Unions Hall.
It was also known as the Roy Morgan Centre for a number of years.
The building has had some well-known owners over the years.
Inside the building at 411 Collins St.
The building is currently home to the Alibaba e-commerce company.
Since the current owner bought it off market in 2020 the building has had a $6.2m renovation that completely overhauled the interiors, which are now draped in polished stone and offer edgy modern office spaces.
JLL agents Josh Rutman, MingXuan Li and Nick Peden are handling the sale.
Mr Peden said with limited options to buy on what is considered the most sought after street in Melbourne’s CBD, the building could be worth anywhere from $35m-$40m.
He added that it had already attracted interest from local and international investors — particularly those based in Asia.
Though with a vacancy on the building’s fifth floor it was also possible it would be purchased by a local investor looking for a building they could move their operation into.
Carlton President Mark LoGiudice has previously owned the building. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
“In terms of office buildings in the city, it’s one of the better buildings of this size and scale and it really does present beautifully as you walk through it,” Mr Peden said.
“It will definitely be one of the bigger sales in the CBD this year.”
Fully leased the building is expected to provide more than $1.8m in rental returns a year, though is currently at $1.05m — including outgoing costs.
Among the tenants is the Melbourne office of Alibaba, a China-based e-commerce giant that is in the world’s 100 biggest companies by market capitalisation.
The building gives off quite a grand first impression.
The large meeting rooms in the office.
Mr Peden added that while Melbourne more broadly had a 19 per cent vacancy rate for office space, the vast majority of this was across the 10 per cent of the CBD that was least attractive to tenants — with Collins St much tighter, particularly for recently renovated buildings.
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