Car park operator to sell $25m portfolio
Car park owner and operator Care Park is offloading nine car parks in Australia and New Zealand worth an estimated $25 million.
Care Park owns multiple buildings or strata car parking floors – a point of difference in an industry where major car operators generally lease space in a building to run parking services from.
The group is listing about 10 per cent of its Australian parking portfolio, the majority Melbourne car parks, to be sold either individually or in one line. All will have long leases in place to Care Park.
They include Victorian assets in Flinders Street, Toorak Village, South Yarra, Abbotsford, St Kilda Road, Dandenong, Shepparton, Bendigo and Wellington in New Zealand.
Care Park is 75 per cent controlled by Hong Kong-listed conglomerate Far East Consortium. Its most valuable asset up for sale is the Flinders Street car park located in a building developed in 2009 by Far East.
Car parking is a $1.2 billion industry in Australia, according to research house IBIS World. Other major players include Secure Parking, Wilson Group, and Sydney and Melbourne’s airports.
Not surprisingly, limited mobility as a result of the outbreak of COVID-19 has severely affected the industry’s revenue, with a sharp 27.9 per cent drop expected this year, IBIS maintains.
But Care Park’s managing director Robert Belteky said the sites the group is selling were all strong performing businesses with established trading histories.
The sales “will help us free up capital and underpin the next growth phase of the business globally,” he said.
Care Park, established 25 years ago, has grown overseas with operations in New Zealand, Malaysia, United Kingdom, and Europe.
The car parks are listed through CBRE’s Nathan Mufale, Scott Hawthorne, JJ Heng, and Scott Orchard.
“Investors are seeking more attractive returns than they can achieve in the bank and other comparable investments,” Mr Hawthorne said.
Mr Belteky said Australia is one of the world’s most motorised countries with most households having at least two cars if not more. “Our operations park over 1 million cars daily,” he said.
