Westgate Lifestyle Centre outlined in blue when it was marketed by Colliers. Costco is shown to the lower left. Photo / Colliers
Westgate Lifestyle Centre outlined in blue when it was marketed by Colliers. Costco is shown to the lower left. Photo / Colliers
This year’s biggest retail property sale was an $85.7 million deal for a 28-store Auckland centre quit by an NZX-listed business.
The $3b landlord, Kiwi Property Group, sold the Westgate Lifestyle Centre at NZ Retail Property Group’s new town centre on a site opposite the $100 million-plus Costco Warehouse onthe city’s northwestern outskirts.
Real estate agency Whillans Realty Group said it had closed the sale, describing it as 2023′s largest so far.
Clive Mackenzie, Kiwi chief executive, said a joint venture bought the property: half Harvey Norman and half interests associated with Rod Duke.
Managing director Bruce Whillans and Colliers international sales director of capital markets Richard Kirke were contracted to sell the centre. Whillans brokered it.
Expressions of interest were due by last November and Kiwi cited the sale when analysts asked about the $1b that the company had borrowed in a conference call after its full-year result on Monday.
Harvey Norman, Freedom Furniture, Hunter Furniture, Briscoes and Rebel Sport are the centre’s anchor tenants but Warehouse Stationery, Bed Bath & Beyond, Bedpost, Flex Fitness, Godfreys, Kitchen Things, Lighting Direct and Nood also have outlets there, paying a net annual rent of around $6m.
Briscoes managing director Rod Duke at one of his stores in Auckland. Photo / Dean Purcell
The 25,754sq m of fully-leased shops built in 2016 stands on a 5.1ha site with 622 parking spaces. Costco shoppers are actively discouraged from parking there.
Whillans said the $85.7m price represented a 7 per cent yield.
“Despite current market uncertainty, the sale shows that prime retail assets continue to attract strong buyer demand. With seven properties currently under contract and two further sales pending, we’re starting to see movement in the market and deal flow gaining pace,” Whillans said in the latest update.
This year’s second-largest retail property sale was by Asset Plus quitting its Mt Roskill bulk retail centre for $36.7m last month, Whillans said.
Third-largest was Eke Panuku’s $2m sale of 3 Victoria Rd, Devonport, on the shopping strip by the ex-Devonport Borough Council offices, Whillans said. The buyer is Peninsula Capital, majority owned by Berridge Spencer’s company.
Peninsula will next month complete the purchase of almost all Victoria Rd shops in one block. Those properties were in 2021 valued by Auckland Council at $43m.
Peninsula is buying 10 properties from Vista Linda, which has owned those for years and whose chief Antonio Regueiro-Diaz died last year.
It confirmed the purchases in a statement this month, saying the company’s backers included two Devonport residents with long-term family connections to the area - Spencer and ex-ANZ banker Graham Turley.
In other Whillans Realty deals lately, agent Jeremy Sim sold 124 Vincent St in Auckland CBD for $20.2m and agents Brice Clark and Henry Thompson sold 101 Mt Eden Rd for $8.5m.
Whillans Realty is also engaged to sell the $60m Wawata Estate on Waiheke Island.
Chris Jacobs of that project said this month he wants to sell the entire project as one lot so he has called in agent Michael Pleciak, previously involved in sales for billionaire Ric Kayne’s Tara Iti Golf Club.
The Waiheke site previously sold for $32m last decade.
Jacobs said unsold sections at the 38ha site marketed as New Zealand’s “most exclusive luxury residential real estate” project were now being marketed collectively.
That is a sign of dramatic housing market changes and a move which shocked others in the industry who said it shows just how difficult some deals have become.
