Triguboff drives away with Suttons site deal as apartments lift

The billionaire is backing a big comeback in the city unit market with one of his largest-ever purchases

Harry Triguboff, billionaire real estate property developer, is backing a recovery of Sydney’s apartment market as Meriton splashes out on a new Sydney site. Photo James Horan

Multi-billionaire developer Harry Triguboff is making one of his biggest ever bets on the apartment market, splashing out more than $300m for the high profile Suttons City site in the inner city Sydney suburb of Zetland.

The sale was quietly struck last year and signals that the billionaire will keep on building apartments as the economy lifts out of the pandemic. It is understood Triguboff is planning a mini-city of towers for the super-sized site to accommodate the area’s growing population.

The buy shows the unit tsar’s confidence in the return of city living and that immigration will come back as borders re-open in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, bringing new buyers into the market.

House prices have soared over the past year but apartment prices are lagging and high-rise developers are hoping to exploit the pricing differential in coming years as a fresh cohort of buyers are financially locked out from purchasing houses.

Although Triguboff owns his own construction company he will have to contend with rising materials costs and the increasing price of land, given he is also competing against cashed up industrial property companies, which are riding the e-commerce boom and need space as retail chain supply chains are reshaped.

But the deep pocketed billionaire is able to knock out many apartment rivals as they can‘t compete for such large projects.

The deal marks Sydney‘s largest ever residential site sale and is well ahead of purchases even during the Chinese property boom when foreign developers surged into the market. Many of the Chinese operators have since retreated leaving the market to more experienced local players.

The deal is a windfall for the Sutton Motors Group, which is controlled by principal Laurie Sutton, who was valued at $896m in The Australian’s The List. Suttons was set up in the early 1940s by Laurie’s father, the late Sir Frederick Sutton, and it declined to comment.

The company is focused on the Sydney basin, where it operates 24 franchised motor vehicle dealership sites, and has hefty property holdings.

The sale of the Suttons City site will see the famed car dealership close in mid-2022. The site had humble beginnings as a Holden dealership but will now shift in the hands of the country’s most prominent apartment developer.

Triguboff declined to comment and his plan for the site is yet to be revealed but is likely to match his large scale developments in the Sydney suburbs of Pagewood and in Parramatta where he is building major towers.

His private Meriton is already a major player in the nearby Green Square area and the latest Zetland development will likely confirm his operation as having one of the largest outputs in the country, with apartment production numbering in the thousands annually.

The purchase is a big turn around from last year when he was forced to shut down multiple construction sites particularly for serviced apartments across Sydney and Melbourne and flagged that he would focus much more of Meriton’s business on Queensland.

He told The Australian then that Sydney was “buried, now we have to resurrect it”. But his latest buy shows the company is backing a Sydney recovery.

The property developer, worth about $16bn, has also been buying more land on Queensland’s Gold Coast and in Brisbane to build 2000-3000 more apartments.

He is finishing the 700-unit Ocean apartment tower in Surfers Paradise and building a second tower on another nearby site with nearly the same number of apartments.