Haben snags Casey Central mall in $225m deal
Haben Property Fund, partnered by Hong Kong investor JY Group, have acquired the Casey Central shopping mall in Melbourne’s south for $225 million, making it the state’s largest such sub-regional shopping centre transaction in five years.
The deal was struck on a yield of around 5.4 per cent, a relatively tight metric that will be closely noted in a market where sub-regional malls have been considered to be most vulnerable to the rise of e-commerce.
The market for major retail transactions is showing signs of re-emerging following the hit to revenue and values reported by major landlords in last year’s pandemic disruption.
On the sell side is British investment house M&G Investments, which acquired the mall in late 2016 for around $221 million from Westfield operator Scentre.
“We are very pleased with the outcome achieved via a highly competitive sale process for Casey Central, with the fund delivering a strong outcome for its investors,” said James MacKinnon, head of M&G Investments’ real estate arm in Australia.
“The asset has shown incredible resilience through a challenging last 12 months and we have been very pleased with its performance over our period of ownership.”
The centre is anchored by Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and a brand-new Kmart discount department store. Together, major tenants occupy 54 per cent of the total space. Underpinning that income, the average lease expiry across the centre is 14.4 years by income.
“We are very focused on the long-term growth fundamentals of the asset and see opportunity to build on the strong foundations that M&G put in place during their ownership,” said Haben’s managing director, Ben Finger.
Haben and the JY Group have teamed up on retail investment previously, striking a near $160 million deal midway through last year to acquire the Pines shopping centre in Melbourne from Stockland.
The Casey Central transaction was brokered by Colliers’ Lachlan MacGillivray, who said the sale brought the total volume of sub-regional transactions for the year to more than $1.2 billion.
“Casey Central is one of the best quality town centres that we have seen offered to the market in recent times,” he said.
“It ticked all the boxes that astute investors were looking for in that it offered a secure tenant profile, limited required capital expenditure and is perfectly positioned to capture the future growth potential of the trade area.”
The flow of chunky retail assets has picked up in recent months. In April, Lendlease’s APPF Retail sold CS Square shopping centre on Melbourne’s north-western edge to the De Lutis family for $136.5 million on a passing yield of about 6.5 per cent. In the same month, Elanor Investors Group bought a Toowoomba mall for $145 million deal on a 7.9 per cent yield from Blackstone, which had acquired it five years earlier for around $188 million.
Last month, Perth’s Mirrabooka mall, part of the real estate empire put together by billionaire Stan Perron, sold to syndicator Fawkner Property for $195 million on a passing yield of 6.97 per cent.
