How nightclub owner Aziz Kheir snagged Melbourne’s biggest property deal

Ozzie Kheir was the son of Lebanese immigrants who started work in a factory, now the Melburnian with the Midas touch has just signed Melbourne’s biggest property deal. Here’s how he did it.

Ozzie Kheir has signed the dotted line on Melbourne’s biggest property deal.

Melbourne Cup and The Everest winning owner Aziz Kheir has a knack for snaring the big ones. Now he’s signed the dotted line on Melbourne’s biggest property deal.

“Ozzie”, the Melburnian with the Midas touch, didn’t just buy a house, he bought a suburb.

After years grappling with lawyers and legal documents in a “very, very tiring and exhaustive” process, Kheir has secured the settlement of Eynesbury, a massive housing estate in Melbourne’s west.

“It’s 500 times the size of the MCG,” Kheir said. “To be honest, along the way I thought I’d done my money cold.”

Valued north of $350 million, the property transaction was the biggest of 2019 in Victoria in value and size, Kheir said.

“It’s a pretty big deal,” he said. “Obviously these large transactions are usually done by a public company.”

Kheir has secured the settlement of Eynesbury, a massive housing estate in Melbourne’s west.

Don’t worry, the public companies tried and failed.

Kheir admits the lawyers are laughing all the way to the bank, as usual, pocketing millions.

“It’s been a bit of a disaster. We purchased it off the Hyde Group after they were in trouble financially,” Kheir said.

The video for Tones and I’s worldwide hit Dance Monkey was filmed on the 17th hole at Eynesbury’s golf course.

Back in the day, one of Australia’s richest families, the Baillieus, owned the 5000ha rural block near Melton. It was part of Woodhouse Station, bought by the family in 1947 when it was a cropping and grazing property.

The Woodhouse Pastoral Company sold it to the Hyde Property Group in 2013.

William Lawrence Baillieu established the family’s property fortune during the Melbourne land boom of the 1880s.

The video for Tones and I’s hit Dance Monkey was filmed at Eynesbury Estate golf course

Fast forward to now and Kheir, the son of Lebanese immigrants who started work on the factory floor, is creating a land boom of his own.

“How things have changed, my wife said. We started out with two townhouses 20 years ago in Pascoe Vale, and now we are building a suburb,” Kheir said.

After meeting Kheir at an auction three years ago, Olympic gold medal pole vaulter Steve Hooker jumped at a chance to get on board.

Hooker is now chief executive of Kheir’s property development business, Resimax.

He was instrumental in getting the Eynesbury deal over the finishing line.

Kheir also owns the Bond Bar, Baroq and Adelphi Hotel.

After pulling off the deal of the decade, Kheir is looking to relax with his pregnant wife and three kids. A new Lamborghini Urus 4WD “family wagon” arrived just days after the deal was signed.

Steve Hooper and Ozzie Kheir on the roof at Ozzie's hotel, the Adelphi. Picture: Andrew Tauber

He is slightly embarrassed about his Lambo fetish.

Not so about his racehorses.

He was part owner of Protectionist, which won the 2014 Melbourne Cup, and Yes Yes Yes, which won the world’s richest turf race, The Everest, last year.

He owns shares in 70 racehorses and is in a legal wrangle with Racing Victoria after his Melbourne Cup favourite Marmelo was dramatically scratched last year.

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Many in the industry, including Kheir, thought it a knee-jerk reaction. Marmelo, who ran second in the 2018 Cup, was later cleared of injury but has now been retired.

“We can’t reverse it,” Kheir said. “It would have put him very close to winning the Cup last year. But I won The Everest so I can’t complain.”

The Eynesbury development is already under way with “more machinery on the site than anywhere else in Victoria”.

Yes Yes Yes, says Kheir.