Japanese Telco Giant Plans 1500-Home Melbourne Estate

A 76-hectare dairy farm in Melbourne’s northern growth corridor has been picked up by a Japanese conglomerate for around $100 million.

Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp, in partnership with South Melbourne-based Yourland Developments, will take control of the site at 915 Donnybrook Road, 33km north of Melbourne, which has been held since 2000 by the Monteleone family.

Jacob Koster, Adam Koster and Matt Koster from real estate agency Alex Scott and Staff brokered the sale.

The Urban Developer contacted Alex Scott and Staff, who confirmed the sale.

Yourland will develop the Donnybrook Road site, which has the capacity for 1500 homes across 1250 lots, with Nippon acting as its capital partner.

The site is in a new 110ha suburb that is part of the already approved Donnybrook Woodstock Precinct Structure Plan (PSP) and next to a future 199ha industrial estate in the Beveridge Intermodal Freight Terminal precinct.

Developers with projects in the new suburb of Donnybrook include Stockland, Mirvac and the Dennis Family Corporation.

At 975 Donnybrook Road, Stockland has plans for 1500 homes on a 90ha site it acquired for $105 million in late 2019 with Bangkok-listed Supalai PLC. It is close to its existing Cloverton Estate.

Mirvac at its site at 995 Donnybrook Road is pressing ahead with multi-decade plans to deliver 2250 homes on a 190ha site.

And the Dennis Family plans to deliver 500 homes across its 40ha residential development, Donnybrae.

Other developers are also bulking up their landbanks after their stock levels where depleted when sales hit record highs in Greater Melbourne, thanks in part to the introduction of the Federal government’s HomeBuilder scheme.

Further north, Chinese-backed local developer Sino Integrity Group and Melbourne hospitality operators the Scerri family purchased a former livestock station at 1545 Merriang Road in Beveridge for $100 million in April.

The developer has tentative plans to transform the 434ha greenfield site into a 1000-house estate.

Melbourne’s northern growth corridor remains in high demand with more renters and home buyers shifting away from the inner city to suburbs and regional areas within commuting distance.

The emerging growth corridor recorded almost 2000 lot sales in the first quarter of 2021, approximately the same amount of lots that it did for the entire 2019 calendar year, leaving the zone with less than one month’s supply for retail and titled lots.

The Donnybrook purchase was Nippon’s third in the Victorian capital after it bought two sites last year. It also bought an office building in Carlton for $72 million.

The deal take the total value of major land sales in Melbourne’s outer suburbs to about $1 billion this year.

Central Equity, Satterley Property Group, Brown Property Group and Stockland have all made sizeable greenfield site acquisitions in the city’s planned growth corridors.