This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
ANOTHER key retail asset has changed hands in what is becoming a pre-Christmas rush for the sector, with the Dexus Wholesale Property Fund offloading Beenleigh Marketplace for $85 million.
Investor and developer Mintus is the new owner of the 20,252 sqm sub-regional shopping centre. There is immediate potential to undertake a remixing of the Woolworths and Big W-anchored centre’s specialty tenants, while the 6.6-hectare landholding provides scope for future development opportunities.
The landholding include the 56,290 sqm shopping centre site adjoining an office building and ancillary land of 4,390 sqm.
Beenleigh Marketplace is the focal point of the Beenleigh town centre, located 32 kilometres from south east of Brisbane, and draws 2.6 million visitors and has a moving annual turnover of $117 million.
“The transaction demonstrates the continued demand for quality, metropolitan sub-regional assets with a focus on non-discretionary spending,” said Simon Rooney of CBRE who negotiated the deal.
“There is particularly strong interest in assets which offer strategic value-add opportunities.”
Population growth occurring in and around the centre will see the current resident population of 115,000 people grow by 2.3% each year to 2036, while the centre benefits is strategically positioned along the Beenleigh and Gold Coast train line that will accommodate major residential developments, including the Yarrabilba master-planned community that will introduce an additional 45,000 residents by 2050.
The $15 billion unlisted Dexus Wholesale Property Fund had recently divested the Shepparton Marketplace shopping centre in regional Victoria for just over $88 million, on a cap rate of 6.25%. Rooney also brokered that deal.
Beenleigh Marketplace is the latest retail asset to change hands after major retail transactions slowed to a trickle during 2022.
HMC Capital has just picked up $242.5 million worth of shopping centres in Perth and Sydney from Lendlease, including Southlands Boulevarde in south Perth and Menai Marketplace in Sydney, just after Sentinel Property Group confirmed its $280 million acquisition of Caneland Central Shopping Centre in Mackay – also from Lendlease – on a passing yield of 7.7%.
Just under $300 million worth of retail property was sold in the three months to November, according to The Data App – a 79% fall from the $1.4 billion-plus that changed hands in the same period last year, while capitalisation rates have softened to nearly 6%.
That dry spell followed a string of bumper retail asset transactions, including Sentinel’s $418 million acquisition of Darwin’s Casuarina Square from GPT Group.
