The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's (DFAT) Civic office building has been listed for sale ahead of its move into the secretive "spy precinct".
The 9167-square-metre office building, located at 255 London Circuit, is currently 100 per cent occupied by DFAT.
The lease was recently extended until June 2028, when the department's new office at 19 National Circuit in Barton is expected to be completed.
The move to Barton would consolidate DFAT workers from three other buildings around Canberra, the leases for which were set to expire within a few years of each other.
The shorter lease was an opportunity to reposition, according to the listing by JLL, which is selling the property via an expression of interest campaign ending on Friday, September 25.
"The current lease provides $13.4 million in contractual gross income until June 2028, offering stable cash flow and a defined window to execute a repositioning strategy in a precinct awash with strong occupier activity," the listing notes.
The building includes six storeys of office space, and three basements of car parks. It was the first Commonwealth-occupied building to achieve a five-star NABERS Energy rating.
The owner, Growthpoint Properties Australia, bought the building in 2015 for just more than $70 million.
It was the largest property sale in the territory since 2013, with settlement dependent on confirmation the sale would pose no risk to national security.
A spokesperson for Growthpoint Properties said the sale was consistent with its capital management strategy.
"Having recently extended the lease at the asset, we believed that now is an appropriate time to test the market," the spokesperson said.
"The building was constructed in 2007, and is a modern, A-grade asset in Canberra's City East with the ability to offer a product into the leasing market in 2029 below the expected rentals of new developments."
Growthpoint Properties owns three other office buildings in the ACT, including 2-6 Bowles Street, 10-12 Mort Street and 2 Constitution Avenue.
It is the second large commercial office block listed in Civic this month, following the Morris Property Group's One City Hill, and is one of several prominent buildings either listed or sold this year.
Those include the Australian Federal Police's training college, which was sold for $86 million in April, and AMA House, the home of the Peruvian and Korean embassies, which sold for $25.13 million in July.
The Edmund Barton building, the headquarters of the Australian Federal Police, was put on the market in May.
The commercial property market was slow in 2025, when just $320 million was transacted, the majority of which was the final-hour sale of the Yaradhang building for $305 million in December.
At the same time, the number of empty offices in Civic has continued above the long-term average for the fourth year in a row, with the vacancy rate in Civic jumping from 12 per cent to 26.4 per cent over the past six months, according to the Property Council of Australia's Office Market Report.
