Former bookie Eskander doubles money on South Melbourne office
Ex-bookmaker and Betstar founder Alan Eskander has pocketed a more than 100% windfall on the sale of a South Melbourne office he bought less than five years ago.
The celebrity bookie, who sold Betstar to betting behemoth William Hill in 2014, sold the office and warehouse space at 34-36 Market St for $5.85 million – more than double what he paid in 2013.
The 584sqm property occupies a prime corner site with a combined 48m of street frontage, and sits just 120m from the Clarendon St retail and cafe strip and 400m from South Melbourne Market.
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Zoned ‘commercial 2’, the office also has 10 on-site car parking spaces.
CBRE’s David Minty, Mark Wizel, Nathan Mufale and Chao Zhang handled the sale.
Minty says demand for inner-city land is now so fierce that commercially-zoned sites are seeing similar interest to sites with residential development potential.
“Unprecedented tenant demand, low vacancy rates, rising rents and yield compression are collectively creating the emergence of new office markets in and around Melbourne’s CBD,” he says.
“The rapid popularity of commercial 2 zone sites in 2017 surpassed expectations, with land rates for traditionally light industrial uses now attracting premiums which are almost rivalling that of zoned sites suited for residential development.”
The sale came at a land rate of more than $10,000 per square metre, while the building rate was in excess of $13,000 per square metre.
