Dahua has bought one of the last large parcels of land in Point Cook

Shanghai-based developer Dahua has beefed up its Melbourne housing pipeline after striking a $140 million deal to buy almost 100 hectares of land in Point Cook in the city’s south-west.

Title deeds show Dahua Group Melbourne has placed a caveat over a 98.4-hectare site at 688 Aviation Road after agreeing to buy it from land banker Aviation 3030 Pty Ltd.

Aviation 3030, led by Cambodian-born Hakly Lao, is currently the subject of a wind-up application by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on the grounds that it operated an unregistered managed investment scheme and that it issued shares without a prospectus.

Mr Lao was also the orchestrator of another land banking scheme, VKK Investments Unit Trust, which was wound up April after being found to be operating an illegal MIS that raised $22 million from 125 investors.

Aviation 3030 bought 688 Aviation Road for $7.8 million in 2011 and then raised about $10.59 million from approximately 73 shareholders and unitholders with an intention to resell it as a rezoned housing site.

It forms part of the proposed new suburb of Aviators Field which was recently rezoned by the Victorian government.

More articles:Half of all home sales in Perth occur below $500,000 in February

Dahua declined to comment. Trent Hobart and Mark Burgio from Colliers International and Frank Nagle and Andrew Egan of Biggin & Scott Land acted for Aviation 3030.

Dahua’s acquisition of 688 Aviation Road will give the developer a blank canvas of almost 200 hectares – almost half the total area of Aviators Field which covers 414 hectares adjacent to the existing suburb of Point Cook.

In 2016, Dahua paid $52 million to buy the neighbouring 96-hectare site at 640 Aviation Road, part of a swoop on three Point Cook sites that gained it control of 200 hectares of land that could support thousands of new homes. Subdivision of Aviators Field for housing is about three to four years away.

Dahua also bought two sites with over 110 hectares of land in Wollert in Melbourne’s North in 2017. It has a number of active housing estates in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane along with a 345-unit apartment development under construction in Hawthorn East.

Dahua was founded in 1988 by self-made real estate mogul Jin Huiming. Mr Huiming, whose wealth Forbes estimated at $US1.1 billion, was a farmer living on the outskirts of Shanghai before he convinced a group of neighbouring farmers to join forces in a transformative real estate transaction.

That former farming region is now a developed suburb of Shanghai called Dahua, which bears a statue of Mr Huiming commissioned by local residents.

Originally published by commercialrealestate.com.au

Reporter – LARRY SCHLESINGER – Financial Review