Canberra office building at 11 Moore Street sells for $44 million

A CBD office building has sold to a private Sydney-based investor for $44 million in a campaign that attracted new interest to the Canberra market.

The eight-storey, 8735-square-metre building at 11 Moore Street is fully leased to the ACT government until October 2020.

The Willemsen Group sold the property through Knight Frank’s associate director of institutional sales Nic Purdue and JLL’s ACT managing director Andrew Balzanelli.

Mr Purdue said the campaign generated strong interest from national and international groups and for many it was their first foray into the Canberra market.

“Sydney and Melbourne are getting pretty expensive and buyers are looking at Canberra as a credible alternative investment destination,” Mr Purdue said.

He said inquiry came from as far as the US, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong.

“The campaign resulted in a number of buyers undertaking extensive due diligence on the Canberra market and we now have a wall of capital chasing assets, particularly in the CBD and Barton,” Mr Purdue said.

Mr Balzanelli said this year’s sales figures demonstrated that investor interest remained strong in Canberra’s commercial sector.

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JLL’s research showed office and retail sales volumes were $659,710,000 during the first six months of 2017, compared to $280,315,000 during the first six months of 2016.

“Canberra is attracting significant interest from investors, and with our underlying economy performing so well, this will continue throughout the rest of 2017,” Mr Balzanelli said.

The sale of 50 Marcus Clarke Street for $321 million contributed to almost half of the 2017 figure.

The 12-storey, 40,201-square-metre building sold to a South Korean investment group in March. 

It was the biggest sale of a Canberra office building on record.