Savills Leads Asia Brokerage Wins with HK$790M Hong Kong Office Deal  Mingtiandi Broker Battle

Savills tops Mingtiandi’s deal charts for the second time running with the property consultancy reported to brokered the HK$790 million ($101 million) sale of an office redevelopment project in Hong Kong’s Cheung Sha Wan area on behalf of consumer goods firm Li & Fung.

Just three stops away on the Asian financial hub’s eerily empty MTR, Cushman & Wakefield notched a Mong Kok win, advising on the sale of a mixed-use development site in the bustling district for HK$350 million.

Down in Singapore, CBRE made history by brokering the most expensive office transaction in the city within the last five years.

Meanwhile in Australia, Cushman & Wakefield teamed with Chesterton International to assist BlackRock in selling a Sydney office building to Singapore’s SC Capital for A$127 million.

With progress hampered by the coronavirus outbreak, mainland China was quiet again this week, however, CBRE still managed to pick up a data centre leasing appointment in Nanjing for a division of a Hong Kong Internet operator.

Keep reading for all the details on which brokerages won deals this month, and if your team has capital markets or leasing victories to report, please contact us here at Mingtiandi.

Hong Kong

According to a Mingtiandi source, Savills advised consumer goods firm Li & Fung on the HK$790 million ($101 million) sale of the Centennial Building in Cheung Sha Wan to developer First Group Holdings. Based on the property’s gross floor area of 116,045 square feet (10,781 square metres), First Group paid HK$6,894 per square foot for the project at 924-926 Cheung Sha Wan Road in Kowloon. An account in local newspaper Sing Tao reported that First Group Holdings plans to redevelop the site into a grade A office property.

According to sources who spoke to Mingtiandi, Cushman & Wakefield has brokered the HK$350 million sale of a mixed-use residential and commercial development site at 181-183 Sai Yee Street in Mong Kok on behalf of local manufacturer Eastern Hobbies Limited. Based on the total permissible gross floor area of 30,000 square feet, an undisclosed buyer paid HK$11,666 per square foot for the property – an 8 percent discount on the HK$380 million, or HK$12,800 per square foot, asking price that the seller was seeking when the property was put on the market in October. Read more>>

Local property agent Midland has been appointed by a division of Hong Kong’s Urban Redevelopment Authority as the sole agent for the sale of 12 & 14 Tong Shui Road in North Point. Located on the corner of Tong Shui Road and Marble Road, the 1954-vintage property, which occupies a 1,939 square foot site, may be redeveloped as a commercial property, subject to necessary planning approvals, according to the agent. Read more>>

Local property firm Centaline has been appointed as the exclusive marketing agent for the en-bloc sale of a tenement building at 196 Apliu Street in Sham Shui Po. The current owner, Sight Cheong Investments, purchased the property for HK$14.5 million in 2002, according to the land registry. Zoned for commercial and residential mixed use, the building has 2,000 square feet of commercial leasable area and around 4,407 square feet of residential space. Centaline said the selling price is negotiable. Read more>>

Savills has been appointed by unnamed investors for the en bloc sale of a pair of properties at 111-113 Temple Street and 12 Temple Street in Yau Ma Tei at a combined asking price of HK$185 million. The Kowloon properties are available for redevelopment as a mixed-use building or hotel, subject to appropriate approvals. Read more>>

Singapore

CBRE has brokered the S$49.78 million ($36 million) sale of the eleventh floor of the Samsung Hub office tower in Singapore’s central business district on behalf of local investment management firm Sun Venture, according to an announcement by the company. A South Korean high net worth individual purchased the 13,100 square foot asset in the 999-year leasehold building at 3 Church Street for the equivalent of S$3,800 per square foot, ranking the transaction as the city’s most expensive strata transaction on a price per square foot basis within the last five years. Read more>>

CBRE and Edmund Tie have been appointed as joint marketing agents by JL Asia Resources Pte Ltd, the hospitality arm of developer J’Forte Group, to sell the Porcelain Hotel in Chinatown. The 138-key boutique hotel located at 46 to 50 Mosque Street has an asking price of S$115 million, or S$833,333 per key. With 38,868 square feet of gross floor area, the four-storey shophouse conversion was developed as a joint venture between Singapore businessman Jason Lee and Mary Chia Holdings. Read more>>

Knight Frank has been appointed to sell a detached good class bungalow in District 21 on behalf of a private individual at an asking price of S$20.8 million, according to The Business Times.  Based on the property’s 16,163 square feet of land, the asking price is equivalent to S$1,287 per square foot. Located on Yarwood Avenue, the property comes with a 999-year leasehold starting from 1885. Read more>>

Australia

Cushman & Wakefield, alongside Australia’s Chesterton International, brokered the sale of 2 Elizabeth Plaza in North Sydney on behalf of BlackRock. Suchad Chiaranussati’s SC Capital Partners purchased the 14-storey office building from BlackRock for A$127 million ($83 million). Based on the property’s 7,581 square metres (81,601 square feet) of net leasable area, the Singapore-based private equity shop purchased the 1989-vintage property for A$16,752 per square metre, with the transaction providing the buyer with a net initial yield of five percent. Read more>>

Mainland China

CBRE has been appointed by Big Data Exchange (BDx), the data centre unit of Hong Kong Internet provider HGC Global Communications, as the sole leasing agent for an data centre development project in Nanjing. Located in the city’s Jiangning district, the facility will have a gross floor area of 25,700 square metres when completed with the ability to house up to eight data halls. With an initial power capacity of 14 MW, the data centre will be capable of scaling up to 40 MV. Read more>>

UK

Market sources have confirmed to Mingtiandi that JLL has been appointed to sell 5 Fleet Street in London on behalf of Poly Real Estate at an asking price of £182.5 million ($238 million). The state-run mainland developer purchased the 130,000 square foot office block in the UK capital’s financial district for £145 million in 2016.

Research for this story was provided by Li Yanxia and Iris Poon. Mingtiandi’s Broker Battle series is published twice monthly on Tuesdays.