Melbourne's Arena mall wins Chinese buyer
The $48 million sale of a suburban mall in Melbourne’s south-east is the latest in a run of retail property acquisitions by Chinese buyers in the Victorian market.
The Arena Shopping Centre, built four years ago by Andrew Facey’s development group Parklea, is on the corner of the Princes Highway and Cardinia Road in Officer.
The centre is on almost three hectares, anchored by a 4100-square-metre Woolworths supermarket and BWS on a 20-year lease.
It has 25 specialty retailers and a freestanding McDonald’s and Caltex service station. The centre generates an annual income of $2.65 million.
CBRE’s Mark Wizel, Justin Dowers and Kevin Tong brokered the property, which was bought by an investor from Shenzhen.
Mr Dowers said the purchaser had outbid a number of local private groups, plus Sydney-based institutions.
The Arena Shopping Centre covers almost three hectares on a corner site. Photo: Supplied
“The centre’s strategic corner position has always ensured a strong trade performance, which ultimately underpinned a huge amount of interest in the asset,” he said.
Mr Wizel said the sale represented an initial yield of 5.38 per cent, which took into account the larger than normal size of the centre compared with other neighbourhood shopping centres in the state.
“The sale of Arena Shopping Centre is a very strong statement for the overall confidence that buyers have for retail assets in Melbourne’s south-eastern corridor,” he said.
Over the past 15 months Chinese investors have spent more than $380 million buying retail property across Victoria.
This month a Chinese investor bought a Woolworths store in Brunswick for $13.5 million on a 4.81 per cent yield.
One of Melbourne’s most popular drinking spots, the Beach Hotel in Albert Park, together with the neighbouring Foodworks supermarket, was sold to mainland Chinese investors for about $18 million on a very tight yield of about 4.2 per cent.
