Macquarie Park mega-lot tipped to fetch more than $85 million

Across the road at 12-14 Lachlan Ave and 13 Cottonwood Crescent, 33 owners sold their units in one line for about $54 million last year.

And next door to the current site, 60 owners at 15-21 Cottonwood Crescent sold their property together for more than $80 million to a local developer in August.

The land parcel at 7-11 Lachlan Avenue comprises five four-storey detached residential unit buildings on separate strata titles. It has site frontages between 58 metres and 79 metres along Herring Road, Windsor Drive and Lachlan Avenue.

The site could yield about 240 apartments with a 45-metre height limit and gross floor area of 20,288 square metres, subject to council approval.

It was rezoned for mixed-use development in 2014 – part of the Macquarie University Station Precinct revitalisation.

The 5072-square-metre site could yield more than 20,000 square metres of gross floor area. Photo: Supplied

Savills selling agent Neil Cooke, who has the listing with Stuart Cox, said they had received interest from local, interstate and international developers.

“It’s a huge opportunity and the fact that it’s 100 per cent (unit entitlements) is just massive,” he said, referring to the number of owners who signed up for the sale.

“There’s a few people away or overseas so it was quite tricky to get everyone on board, but we did eventually.”

Mr Cox called it a “risk-free acquisition” with the zoning already in place and complete unit entitlement.

“Very rarely do developers/investors have the opportunity to acquire 100 per cent of unit entitlements in NSW and this site ticks every box for prospective developers and student accommodation providers,” he said.

“There is also incentive to obtain delayed 12-month settlement terms, something that very seldom happens with these sorts of sites.”

Mr Cooke said Macquarie Park was sought after because of its proximity to the shopping centre, the railway station and the university.

“They’re the three things that developers look for building apartments and this is one of the largest and last landholdings in the area, so developers will be fighting over it to make sure they get into Macquarie Park.”

If the site’s sale price exceeds $85 million, each unit owner would pocket more than $1.3 million on average for their homes, which are all two bedroom units. The median unit price in Macquarie Park for 2017 was $730,000, Domain Group data shows.

Competitors try to block sales

The lot is made up of five unit buildings. Photo: Supplied

Mr Cooke said while it was rare to gather all property owners on board, there were attempts by developers to hinder collective residential sales.

“The reason why the other one at 15-21 Cottonwood Crescent didn’t have 100 per cent (unit entitlements) was that there was a developer (who) came in and tried to block the sale by buying a couple of apartments, so we obviously needed to overcome that,” he said.

“Now there’s no developers or anyone involved in this one (7-11 Lachlan Avenue) apart from the mums and dads who own the units so everyone was keen to jump on board.”

Mr Cooke noted that the developer who tried to obstruct the 15-21 Cottonwood Crescent sale had been interested in the site for themselves and was trying to create a position of leverage.

But the change in strata law which required 75 per cent of home owners to agree on a sale meant they needed more than 25 per cent of the properties to stop the deal.

“The developers were handpicking units around the place trying to create blockers in there, but that legislation has now changed so if they’ve only got one or two units, they can’t block the site sale.”