Centuria wants $80 million for Canberra office tower
Centuria Capital has taken a 14-storey Canberra office building to market with $80 million-plus hopes, as it seeks to capitalise on the demand for property in the country’s most resilient office property market.
The ASX-listed fund manager is counting on strong demand for Scarborough House, a building with 16,755-square-metre net lettable area at 1 Atlantic Street in Phillip in Canberra’s Woden district.
Canberra was the only capital city to see vacancy rates fall over the year to March, giving it an A-grade vacancy rate below 5 per cent for the first time since 2008.
“Woden is a prime commercial investment location,” said JLL’s head of sales and investments Tim Mutton, who is marketing the building with Colliers’ director of capital markets and investment services Matthew Winter.
“A-Grade vacancy has been zero percent since January 2011. Residential projects planned for the town centre will bring an additional 10,000 residents to Woden and transformative infrastructure projects are under way.”
Drawn by relatively higher yields, overseas institutions are putting money into Australian office assets and locals are keen to sell. Dexus last month struck a deal to sell a one-third stake in Sydney’s flagship 1 Bligh Street building to Singaporean investor Mercatus for $375 million.
The open-ended EG Australian Core Enhanced Fund, backed by investors including Dutch pension giant PGGM, was looking at “prospects” in Canberra, fund manager Michael Noblet said this month.
The building has a 5-star NABERS Energy and 3.5-star NABERs Water rating and its net passing income is $6.52 million.
Centuria, which owns the building leased to the federal health department as the sole asset in a closed-ended unlisted trust, is not the only owner trying to tap buyers in Canberra’s tight office market.
Lendlease’s Australian Prime Property Fund Commercial has also put an A-Grade office building at 25 Constitution Avenue, fully leased to agency Airservices Australia and the Commonwealth government, in the city’s CBD up for sale through JLL’s Mr Mutton and CBRE’s NSW state director of capital markets James Parry.
