Abacus Property Group comes out $2 million ahead after selling Varsity Lakes building on Gold Coast for $14M

A listed real estate group has made a tasty profit on a Gold Coast investment, come out ahead by $2 million after offloading a Varsity Lakes building.

Abacus has sold the single-level building at 169 Varsity Pde (pictured centre) for $14 million.

LISTED real estate group Abacus Property Group has come out ahead by $2 million after offloading its office building at Varsity Lakes to a Gold Coast investor.

The Sydney-based company sold 169 Varsity Pde, which it bought for $12 million in September, 2007, for $14 million. The sale settled yesterday.

The 1.30ha Varsity Pde property has a single-level building with a net lettable area of 3356sq m. Tenants in the fully-leased property, which has a fully-leased income of $1.171 million, include NBN Co, the company building the National Broadbeach Network, and Bank of Queensland.

The property was marketed, with 1 Bellvue Drive, also owned by Abacus, by Knight Frank’s Mark Witheriff and James Branch and Brad Duncalfe and Sam Riley, of Ray White Commercial GC South.

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1 Bellvue Drive, Varsity Lakes.

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Mr Witheriff said there has been significant investment activity on the Gold Coast during the past six months.

“We are anticipating further demand, given the recent interest rate reduction from the Reserve Bank and hopefully some further relaxation on lending requirements from APRA, which should see further liquidity and investment into the market,” he said.

Mr Duncalfe said the property attracted a wide range of interest from development groups drawn to the strong tenant profile.

“They were also attracted to the significant upside in the potential future redevelopment of waterfront residential apartments on this site,” he said.

That could include knocking down the office building to make way for a medium-density residential development with three buildings, subject to council approval, and similar to the Brooklyn Apartments development in Varsity Lakes.

“Given the strong fundamentals of the Gold Coast economy, we expect to see continued tightening on vacancies across the five precincts and anticipate continued demand for this style of investment particularly from local and southern-based investors.”

The most recent office market report from the Property Council of Australia showed the vacancy rate in the Robina/Varsity Lakes precinct fell to 12 per cent for the six months to January.

The other Abacus building at 1 Bellvue Drive was purchased for $11 million in September, 2007. It is understood to be under contract.

The 8670sq m property contains a three-level building with a net lettable area of 3650sq m and delivering a passing income of $497,487.