Aussies make $17m on NZ hotel deal in four months!
New Zealand’s biggest hotel has been sold by Australian property company Abacus for a record $NZ113 million, giving the Company a $NZ17 million profit after just four months of ownership.
CDL Hospitality Trusts of Singapore has bought the Rendezvous Hotel Auckland, formerly the Carlton Hotel, from ASX-listed Abacus Property Group, with the deal following the hotel’s $NZ96 million sale in June to Abacus by Carlton Group, owned by the Li family of Hong Kong.
Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels’, Mike Batchelor said that even though Abacus had bought the hotel only in June, it had added value by negotiating a long-term lease to Rendezvous Hotels.
Frank Wolf, managing director of Abacus, said the sale to CDL was subject to the Overseas Investment Office’s approval, Abacus selling the hotel subject to a 10-year lease to Rendezvous and giving CDL a three-year rental top-up guarantee.
The sale price of $NZ113 million, means that the 455 rooms have been sold for $NZ248,000 each.
Also an international survey by Jones Lang LaSalle has shown that Auckland was the third most popular place in the world for hotel investors, after Beijing and Bali, with Australian investors, frustrated by the lack of quality assets for sale in Australia now look offshore and in particular to politically and security stable New Zealand, but while investors want properties in New Zealand, hotel developers are avoiding NZ because of its high land prices.
The survey also said that Auckland is the least popular place to build a new hotel in the world, topping the poll as the worst choice for hotel developers, followed by Melbourne and Brisbane.
Report by The Mole
John Alwyn-Jones
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