Artist’s Conception of the Greenland Centre in Sydney which the group acquired last year
Greenland Group announced recently that it has acquired two more parcels of land in Sydney, Australia as China’s most aggressive international real estate investor brought its basket of major overseas projects purchased this year to six.
The Shanghai-based property developer made it known this week that it has acquired two new residential development sites in Australia’s most international city, and may be on the lookout for more. Dollar values for these latest acquisitions were not immediately released.
A story in the South China Morning Post included comment from the Managing Director of Greenland Australia, Sherwood Luo, who confirmed that, “We are looking for a few opportunities at the moment in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney, with total development values ranging from A$500 million (HK$3.58 billion) to A$3 billion.”
The two new Sydney projects are in addition to an existing US$438 million development in Sydney and a $1 billion development in Melbourne that the Chinese state-run firm acquired last year. Luo said that the cost of acquiring the four Australian projects totalled A$1.5 billion (US$1.386 billion), but indicated that the cost of the projects was justified by the strong demand for Australian homes among Chinese buyers.
In the case of the company’s first Sydney project, which Greenland acquired in March last year, the firm’s aggressive approach to investment has already begun paying off. Last December in the first weekend of presales, buyers led by mainland Chinese clients, snapped up RMB1.5 billion (US$246 million) of the downtown Sydney high rise homes before the project even broke ground.
New Sydney Projects
Greenland’s two newest Australian projects include a downtown site in north Sydney, and a location in Leichardt near the University of Sydney.
The downtown site is located close to North Sydney metro station near the centre of Sydney’s central business district, and will include 200 residential apartments over 29,000 square metres of GFA. The developer said that it expects to begin sales on the downtown project later this year.
The Leichardt project is about eight kilometres west of downtown Sydney about 900 metres from the Lewisham railway station. The project plan allows for approximately 35,000 square metres of GFA and 240 units of residential space with some commercial area as well.
12 Large Scale Projects in 18 Months
Chairman Zhang Yuliang has been acquiring a new project about every six weeks for the past 18 months
Greenland’s Australian projects are part of a grand expansion plan that has seen the group take primary ownership and control of more than 13 early stage development projects in 11 cities across eight countries within the last eighteen months.
So far this year Greenland has already taken on a RMB 20 billion project in Malaysia, a $1 billion project on London’s Canary Wharf, a $360 million project in Canada, and another $900 million project in London.
During 2013 the Shanghai-based real estate firm bought the US$1 billion Metropolis site in Los Angeles, took over the US$4 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, and also took over developments in Sydney, Melbourne and South Korea.
Early last month, company chairman Zhang Yuliang reportedly said the firm’s overseas investments would reach RMB 20 billion this year. And the state-run giant is still expanding in China as well, having acquired a residential site in downtown Shanghai for RMB 5.95 billion (US$979 million) during December.
Now Greenland is hoping for fast returns on big investments, as the group’s chairman Zhang Yuliang recently predicted that the real estate company’s 2014 revenues would be more than RMB 20 billion, before doubling to exceed RMB 40 billion in 2015.
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