Homecorp: Gold Coast property developer Ron Bakir’s Varsity Lakes tower’s massive sales success

An ambitious dive into build-to-rent towers by Gold Coast developer Ron Bakir with a giant US funds manager has been turned on its head - to great success. FIND OUT WHY

An ambitious dive into build-to-rent towers by Gold Coast developer Ron Bakir, in tandem with giant US funds manager Morgan Stanley, has been turned on its head.

All but 20 of the 257 apartments in the Varsity Lakes community’s first two buildings, which were rushed by renters, quietly have been sold off to owner-occupiers and investors.

Ron and his Homecorp group bought out Morgan Stanley before embarking on the sell-off.

It appears both Ron and the American group have fared handsomely and might team up for other ventures.

Just what spurred the move to sell the apartments, which were hot renters, has not been disclosed.

Homecorp's Cienna Varsity Ridge, 2 Main Street Varsity Lakes

The motivation could well have been the extra value locked into the apartments by a market that has boomed since Covid, which arrived in the year that stage one of what is known as Cienna Varsity Ridge was started.

Other factors might have been a surge in interest rates and a shortage of new apartments on the market back from the coast.

The four-tower Cienna, when it was unveiled, was to be a $200 million venture.

The sell-off in the two initial towers, in which prices achieved have ranged from $550,000 for a one-bedder through to $850,000 for a two-bedroom unit, looks to have realised way north of north of 2020 forecasts.

That’s despite the Ron-Morgan Stanley team suffering a huge blow when the construction group hired for the project collapsed.

Ron Bakir. Photo: Regi Varghese

The downfall of Condev came when work on the 16 and 10-floor initial towers was underway and they were 40 per cent built.

Homecorp, after much negotiating and by paying money owed to shell-shocked Condev contractors, was able to assemble its own force and restart Cienna.

Tower one was completed in December 2022 and its neighbour four months later.

Both buildings were in vigorous demand from renters and leased at an average $650 a week.

Some of the renters were quick to become owners when the decision to take a sell-off tack was made.

Stage two of Cienna is in the works, with development approvals lodged for two towers, one of 16 levels and the other 12.

They’ll increase the number of apartments on the Main St site, bought four years ago, to 542.

Ron was a partner in the company that previously owned the 1.3ha holding, along with the Sunland Group, Harvey Norman executive Steve Cavalier, former retailer Sepher Abedian, and Condev boss Steve Marais.

The project.

The developer, a 47-year-old father of three, bought out his partners, as he did later with Morgan Stanley at Cienna.

The one-time mobile-phone retailer has been in the property game for 20 years, initially as a home-builder.

He pushed annual output to 400 homes a year and in 2018 he sold 51 per cent of his Homecorp Constructions offshoot to Misawa Homes, which is controlled by auto giant Toyota.

The Homecorp parent company is in the final stages of completing an apartment tower at Labrador, with Hutchinsons the builder rather than Ron’s Cienna team.

The 25-floor Eve Residences, which will have 155 apartments, was a sellout soon after it was announced for a former KFC and Holy Mackerel site in Marine Pde.

$15M DEAL ON THE BOIL

Dr Soheil and Anne Abedian Pic: Regina King.

A deal worth $15 million is on the boil for an apartment in the Sunland Group’s 272 tower in Mermaid Beach’s Multi-Millionaires’ Row.

The sale, for which the planned settlement day is months away, would top the record price in the Hedges Ave building of $12 million, set early last year by Rosa Raso, wife of Austworld plumbing products boss Sam Raso.

That whole-floor property spans 650 sqm and sits below the two-floor 1103 sqm penthouse for which Sunland’s Soheil and Anne Abedian paid a rebated $5.89 million.

The likely new record-holder is a skyhome that occupies a 500 sqm major portion of a floor.

THAT’S ALL WHITE

Buyers in Main Beach tower White have every reason to paint the town red as they watch prices in their building, which was completed last year, rocket ahead.

A whole-floor apartment on level 20 of the building, for which an off-the-plan buyer paid $3.392 million 10 months ago, has re-sold for $6.2 million.

The buyer is Anne Marie Wooldridge who, with hubby Steve, has enjoyed luxury in several Gold Coast properties.

A floor on level seven, with four bedrooms and a media room, has changed hands for $4.4 million – or $2 million more than it cost.

Meanwhile, Ross and Naomi Marino, who sold out of White for a big gain at $5 million, have paid $7 million for floor four in the beachfront Katie Page developed M3565 at Main Beach.

NOT WILD WEST

Brett Kennedy, who heads a family company that’s been in business for more than 70 years, is out to sell a Surfers Paradise site that was intended to house a luxury 22-floor tower.

Two years ago the Kennedys’ Brisbane-based West Homes, no newcomer to the Gold Coast, was given a planning OK to put the high-rise on the 832 sqm site, on the western side of Old Burleigh Rd.

West wanted to deliver Aurora, a building with 20 three-bedroom single-floor sky homes, but apparently has opted to turn its focus to another unnamed holding.

The West land, on which an eight-unit walk-up has been demolished, has joined an Old Burleigh Rd site approved for a 46-floor tower on the market.