This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
CHARTER Hall offloaded nine cold storage and distribution facilities leased to Woolworths subsidiary PFD Foods at a portfolio auction yesterday, but rising interest rates have spooked investors and the event’s clearance rate was just 50%.
Yesterday’s Burgess Rawson portfolio auction in Sydney saw 11 out of 22 properties sold, after the series achieved a 96% clearance rate at its Sydney and Melbourne editions in October.
Properties passed in included a freestanding Woolworths supermarket in the NSW town of Cooma, a BWS-anchored freehold in Macquarie Fields, a two-level Marrickville restaurant, childcare centres, a fully tenanted retail complex in Canberra, and a Wagga Wagga petrol station.
Nine out of the 13 PFD Foods facilities sold under the hammer, for more than $12.3 million combined. Most had leases running until 2026 or 2031 with multiple options.
The highest price paid for an individual facility was the Tingalpa warehouse in inner Brisbane, which netted $2.67 million and also achieved the tightest yield of the portfolio, at 5.01%.
Yields ranged up to 7.28% – for a warehouse in Esperance, in Western Australia – and prices were as low as $420,000 paid by an investor for a facility in north west Tasmania’s Smithton.
Also selling were PFD Foods facilities in Albury, Griffith, Inverell and Coffs Harbour in NSW – the latter sold for $2.48 million, at 5.39% – in Mildura in Victoria, and Geraldton in Western Australia.
Other properties to sell under the hammer were a Wahroonga medical investment on Sydney’s upper North Shore, for $1.212 million at 4.71%, with a long lease to 2034 to ASX top 50 company Sonic Healthcare, and the Shellharbour offices of national disability employment services provider AtWork Australia, with a new five-year lease, for $815,000 at 6.64%.
