Community & Lifestyle

West Melbourne sheep farm bought for $60,000 sells for $95m

Sheep Central, October 25, 2016
Wyndham Vale sheep farm sold for $95 million.

A Wyndham Vale sheep farm sold for $95 million.

A SHEEP farm bought for about $60,000 in the 1970s has been sold for around $95 million in Melbourne’s latest suburban real estate deal.

As part of a $440m property development in one of Melbourne’s fastest growing suburbs, Wyndham Vale, sheep will be replaced by houses on the 115 hectare former grazing property on Black Forest Road.

The sale means the land bought by a farming couple for $522 a hectare has increased in value to more than $817,000 a hectare in about 40 years as developers scramble for land to service Melbourne’s rapidly growing population. Click here to get Sheep Central story links sent to your email inbox.

The farm sale deal announced this week was brokered by Savills Australia’s Julian Heatherich and Clinton Baxter to Frasers Property – the property development arm of Singapore-based Frasers Centrepoint Ltd.

“The owners are absolutely delighted with the result – it’s beyond anything they could have ever anticipated,” Mr Baxter said.

“They have not yet determined what they will do with the money.”

The site attracted 95 interested parties and 15 bids totalling more than $1 billion, Mr Heatherich said.

“If there was ever a sale which demonstrated the strong long term fundamentals of a particular market and a particular location then this is it.

“The property attracted 15 bids from purchasers with the ensuing competition delivering a result well in excess of market expectations and in the process setting a new value benchmark for the area,” he said.

The property is across the road from the new Wyndham Vale railway station, a 30-minute ride to Melbourne’s central business district to the east, and in a municipality with a population forecast to grow 96 percent to more than 200,000 residents by 2036.

Mr Baxter said key drivers had been Melbourne’s nation leading population growth and the knowledge of the resounding success of other major residential projects in the west.

“The land market in Melbourne’s west is acutely undersupplied with estates such as Woodlea experiencing long queues of buyers for stage releases and so the timing of the sale could not have been better.

“Most estates are selling out well ahead of schedule – a record 22,000 lots sold in the past financial year – and, as a result, developers are scrambling to secure more land to supply surging buyer demand amid Melbourne’s burgeoning population growth,” he said.

Frasers Property Australia said the purchase was one of the largest site acquisitions in Melbourne in recent years and will be part of mixed-used community development that will deliver around 1,200 residential lots and associated amenity, including over 20,000 square metres of retail facilities focused on local needs.

FPA’s executive general manager residential Anthony Boyd said ultimately, more than 3300 people will call the new community home over the next eight years.

The residential component covers 69.4 hectares and will yield around 1200 lots, with 8.3 hectares allocated to education/community use, a further 8.3 hectares for retail and 14.8 hectares dedicated to mixed-use commercial/employment.

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