This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
AMP Capital Investors has beefed its largest unlisted property fund with the purchase of a prized office building in Perth for $153.3 million.
AMP’s Australian Core Property Portfolio has bought the AMP Building located at 140 St Georges Terrace in Perth, Western Australia from another AMP fund. The off-market deal was completed on August 31.
AMP Building is one of Perth’s premier office buildings and is currently tenanted by GRD Minproc, Rothschild, Jackson McDonald, Department of Veteran Affairs, Mallesons, Servcorp, Kott Gunning, Shearn Legal Recruitment, International Finance Corp, Financial Partnerships Group to name a few.
The 34 level A-Grade office tower comprises 30,000 sqm of office space, ground floor retail, a basement car park and also shares ownership with the adjoining four level Central Park car park. There is also a freestanding retail building occupied by Qantas. The buildings occupy a prominent CBD location on the corner of St Georges Tce, William and Hay Streets.
The property recently underwent a $34 million refurbishment which was completed in March 2005.
ACPP’s fund manager Louise Joslin told Australian Property Journal that the property is an example of the AMP Capital Investors’ capability to purchase investment grade property and value add to it through redevelopments and refurbishments.
Joslin said the investment property market remains strong with quality properties in high demand.
“Tenant demand is improving, particularly in the office sector and this, combined with strong investor demand, should support moderate capital growth during the year,” she added.
Meanwhile, Joslin told Australian Property Journal ACPP has a number of master planning projects in the pipeline.
“The fund is an active manager and we have a number of shopping centres in master planning stage.
“2006 will see a continued focus on active asset management of existing fund properties. Master planning for the expansion of several of ACPP’s shopping centres will continue during the year while new property acquisitions will also be targeted,” she added.
Recently, the fund paid $13 million for an office and warehouse building at 88 Ricketts Road in Mt
Waverley, Victoria.
The four storey building was owned by the unlisted Investa First Industrial Trust. It includes 4260 sqm of office space, 6009 sqm warehouse building on a 1.8 hectare site and 222 on-site car parking spaces.
In addition, ACPP recently revalued it’s the Royal Randwick Shopping Centre in New South Wales at $101.1 million – up from $89.4 million.
ACPP is the largest unlisted property fund in Australia with over $4 billion worth of assets.
The ACPP VPST return for the month of August was 0.43%, resulting in a return of 16.54% for the year ending August 31, 2006 – outperforming the Benchmark (Mercer UPI to 31 Dec 04 then 10 year Government Bonds plus 300 basis points on a rolling 3 year basis) which returned 8.49%.
By Nelson Yap
