With one of Australia’s biggest private property portfolios, Cape Bouvard Investments prefers to discretely carry on business in Perth.
With one of Australia’s biggest private property portfolios, Cape Bouvard Investments prefers to discretely carry on business in Perth.
But, in the past year, the private family company shone as it demonstrated its savoir-faire for property cycles and made some big moves on the east coast.
“There is no magic about it – we just look at long term cycles,” Cape Bouvard executive deputy chairman Peter Sarich told WA Business News.
Some would call it common market sense but it is an art that few have mastered as well as Cape Bouvard.
Last year it made an $11.6 million profit when it sold the Wesfarmers building, which it purchased only four years earlier in a dismal leasing climate, as well as purchasing a $180 million development site in Noosa.
Mr Sarich said it was the company’s strategy to buy when the market was low and sell in an upswing, which has been amply demonstrated by several very profitable office sales in Perth and Melbourne over the years.
He said the long term plan for the company was to keep growing its property interests but added they still had to perform against other industries.
“We are scouring the countryside for opportunities below the radar and want to grow as aggressively as we can,” he said.
In last year’s BRW ‘Rich List,’ Cape Bouvard founder, chairman, and orbital engine inventor Ralph Sarich was estimated to be the 22nd richest man in Australia with an estimated worth of $783 million.
Peter Sarich, who has quietly taken over running the day to day operations of the company from father Ralph, said the company’s intent was to hold on to its Perth assets.
These include Emirates House, a 3,000sqm development site on Mounts Bay Road (opposite the Perth Convention Exhibition Centre), Allendale Square and Allendale II (on the former CTA site), as well as Wellington Fair, but Mr Sarich was quick to add that everything has a price.
An ambitious proposal to build the tallest residential apartment tower in Perth on the Mounts Bay Road site has been scrapped but, instead, a 19,000sqm office tower is being mooted.
“We wouldn’t build speculatively but if we had a 25–30 per cent pre commitment, we’d be happy to go,” Mr Sarich said.
“We have also had approaches for joint ventures or purchase of the site.”
Cape Bouvard is also planning a $500 million marina tourism development on its 1,000 hectare Lake Clifton site, just south of booming Mandurah, and is currently going through the preliminary concepts with local and state government.
Also on the Cape Bouvard balance sheet are offices in Melbourne and Sydney, as well as substantial residential developments in Perth (producing almost 300 residential units over the next few years) and Queensland (producing over 800 over the next few years).
There are also residential holdings in NSW and the NT, and Mr Sarich said the company would focus mainly on its east coast investments in the next year.
Cape Bouvard is in eight joint ventures with the omnipresent Macquarie Bank on the east coast and is undertaking the due diligence on a marina project on the east coast, which would provide the perfect ‘cross pollination’ opportunity between the company’s property interests and one of its 2005 acquisitions, the exclusive Australian dealership for Bertram luxury motor yachts.
