Public Company Developer Pays Huge Price for Wyndham Vale Site

115ha property sale attracts 15 bids totalling more than $1 billion

A major international public company has fought off intense competition and paid a price well in excess of expectations for a Wyndham Vale site destined for up to 1,200 homes in a transaction brokered by Savills Julian Heatherich and Clinton Baxter.

Located at 974 Black Forest Road, within one of Australia’s fastest growing municipalities, the 115 hectare site attracted 95 interested parties and 15 bids totalling more than $1 billion, according to Mr Heatherich.

“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,” Mr Heatherich said.

The property is just down the road from the new Wyndham Vale railway station, which offers a 30 minute ride to the CBD, 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,” Mr Baxter said.

He said the property offered an excellent combination of land developable for both residential and town centre purposes, a characteristic that had been particularly appealing to many of the prospective buyers by allowing them to take advantage of robust conditions in each market.