Kevin Seymour and Ariadne sell Brisbane office and car park building

ONE of Queensland’s smartest property investors and his partners have offloaded a key Brisbane CBD office and car park building for almost $40 million more than they paid for it a year ago.

Kevin Seymour has owned 40 Tank St a number of times.

QUEENSLAND property tycoon Kevin Seymour and the ASX-listed Ariadne Australia have sold an office and car park building in a key Brisbane CBD location for almost $40 million more than they paid for it a little over 12 months ago.

After the ASX closed last night Charter Hall announced that its listed real estate investment trust and a fund will pay $93 million for the 10-storey property at 40 Tank St.

Last year Mr Seymour and ­Ariadne Australia paid $56 million for the building which was then owned by US private equity giant Blackstone and partially vacant.

Since then the joint venture has re-leased a significant portion of the building and renegotiated the car park lease.

The office and car park building 40 Tank St in the Brisbane CBD that has sold for $93 million.

“It was always going to be a medium to long term investment for us,” said Mr Seymour who has owned the building a number of times over the years and is the deputy chairman of Ariadne.

“It’s also in an excellent location and so there is that long term development potential there as well.”

The property is near the legal precinct and the $1 billion Brisbane Quarter mixed use development. It is also expected to benefit from Queens Wharf Casino precinct which will be completed in 2022.

The deal was struck on a yield of 5.84 per cent and a rate of $7525 sq m of lettable area, excluding car bays. It was struck by JLL’s Geoff McIntyre, Seb Turnbull and Luke Billiau.

Charter Hall fund manager Avi Anger said the deal demonstrates the company’s recycle proceeds from the sale of the Grace property located at Willawong, Brisbane into a higher quality property investment.

“The acquisition increases the REIT’s exposure to the improving Brisbane CBD office market,” he said.

“The property provides optionality to either extend the leases with the existing tenants or redevelop in the future to a new, long WALE (weighted average lease expiry) property for a substantially larger building.

“We estimate that the underlying land value of the property represents greater than 65 per cent of the purchase price.”

The building and car park has a net lettable area of 6218sq m and 327 carparking bays.

It was refurbished in 2014 and is now 100 per cent leased with a WALE of 6.3 years.

The office component of the building is occupied by the Queensland police while there are five levels of carparking mostly leased to Care Park.

The deal is scheduled to settle at the end of August.