Australia Property

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Country Garden eyes city development sites
THE AUSTRALIAN DECEMBER 04, 2014 12:00AM
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Greg Brown

Property Reporter
Sydney
Country Garden eyes city sites
Country Garden Australia chief executive Johnson Zhang. Source: News Corp Australia
HONG Kong-listed development giant Country Garden aims to buy three development sites next year as it continues talks to buy Harry Triguboff’s Meriton empire.

Country Garden Australia chief executive Johnson Zhang said that the group was looking at sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

He said it was still in talks with Mr Triguboff. But he would not be drawn on whether the Sydney billionaire’s proclaimed $10 billion price tag was too hefty. “We still need to talk further (with Meriton),” Mr Zhang said. The Australian first revealed the Country Garden/Meriton talks in June.

Mr Zhang was not perturbed by figures this week showing the residential market was slowing. Home prices in Melbourne fell more than 2.5 per cent in November, according to researcher CoreLogic RP Data.

He had expected prices would wane, making it easier to buy sites. “(Home price declines) shouldn’t be bad news for Country Garden because when the residential prices go down that means the land price goes down as well,” Mr Zhang said.

“We were recently in Melbourne (looking at sites) for this reason.”

But he said there was an oversupply of apartments in Melbourne and that the planning authorities were too bullish in approving the construction of new inner city projects.

“Melbourne has too many apartments,” Mr Zhang said.

“There are a lot of projects especially around the CBD and it has gone too far.”

Country Garden, which is ranked 633 on the Forbes Global 2000 list, was founded in 1992 and listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2007.

It is controlled by China’s richest woman, Yang Huiyan, a 32-year-old property heiress with a fortune of $7.2bn.

The group entered the Australian market this year through the launch of a $500 million apartment project in Sydney’s northwest.

Mr Zhang said that the newly minted free trade agreement between Australia and China would buoy interest in Australian property from mainland China.

He said that the wave of Chinese groups entering Australia — such as Dalian Wanda Group and China Poly Group — was due to the better performance of Australia’s property market compared with residential markets in China.