Westfield has delayed plans to sell the Pakuranga Plaza and Glenfield Mall. Photo / Richard Robinson.
The sub-prime crisis has hit the Auckland commercial property with a decision by Australian shopping centre giant Westfield to delay the sale of two shopping malls valued at around A$300 million ($342 million).
Westfield has also shelved plans to offload a third of its British fund - worth
around A$400 million - until the market stabilises.
Westfield managing director Steven Lowy said rising interest rates in New Zealand and the difficulty potential buyers faced in getting credit had prompted the decision to put the sale of the Auckland centres on hold.
"It's probably not the best time to sell something and, given that we're not a forced seller, we decided we will take it off the market and deal with it at another time," Mr Lowy told the Australian newspaper
In May, Westfield said it would take a rare step and sell Pakuranga Plaza and Glenfield Mall.
One possible buyer was the Centro Properties Group which this month revealed it had been badly squeezed by the credit crunch.
Lowy said the sales were "very much at the margin" for Westfield, which had already raised A$7 billion in the past 12 months to strengthen its balance sheet.
The giant retail landlord has recently been thought of as a buyer rather than a seller, following last week's meltdown of Centro, Australia's second-biggest and the US' fifth-biggest shopping centre owner
Centro revealed it was having trouble refinancing A$3.9 billion in debt due to the global credit crunch.
Centro has big malls in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
The company has been one of the largest mall buyers in New Zealand this decade, snapping up a string of centres for many millions and thought until now to be hunting for more.
Mall giant
* Westfield is the world's largest listed retail property group.
* Manages assets worth $73.1 billion.
* Owns 12 malls in NZ worth $3 billion.
* Has now delayed sale of two malls in Auckland.
