The sale of Wilton Greens was brokered by Dominic Ong, Mark Litwin, Tim Holtsbaum and Frank Bulpett of Knight Frank.
The Wilton Greens deal follows Risland’s sale of another major estate in Melbourne’s west last year for about $250 million. He gave up the undeveloped part of his The 366 acre Windermere estate, 170 hectares, at the Frasers property of Singapore. The 170 hectares will yield 2,200 more residential lots with a final value of about $800 million, according to Frasers.
The two major assets were put up for sale when the holding company Country Garden warned about liquidity problems that suffered a loss of $ 11 billion in January to June 2023. In October, it defaulted on $ 11 billion ($ 17 .5 billion) of offshore bonds due to the housing underwriting. sales in China.
In 10 years Country Garden has gone from an ambitious player and cashier once in talks to buy Meritonthe business of Australia’s richest developer, Harry Triguboff, for $10 billion, in the shadow of its predecessor.
In 2017, it was the largest Chinese developer with sales of 551 billion yuan ($118 billion).
Other developers have similarly abandoned Australia or severely scaled back their Australian interests in response to China’s property crisis, including Poly, Greenland, Yuhu and Dalian Wanda.
Major Chinese developers have offloaded Australian assets to manage debt and bond repayments amid a housing crisis in China where home buying sentiment has slumped.
House prices fell at the fastest pace in eight years in December, as total residential sales were up 20 percent. Property sales by square footage fell 8.5 percent in 2023, while new construction fell 20.4 percent.
As China’s property crisis continues to deepen, the Chinese government has included Country Garden in its Draft list of 50 developers who will be eligible for a range of financial support.
