ASX-listed Centuria Capital Group has acquired the Margaret River Shopping Centre in regional Western Australia from a local vendor for $15 million, reflecting a 6.47% initial passing yield.
The Margaret River Shopping Centre was fully leased to a Coles Supermarket and Liquorland, as well as specialty stores Brumby’s bakery, Bob’s Shoe Store and jeweller, Glitterati.
The daily needs retail asset was located at 132 Bussell Highway in the heart of the Margaret River, about 270 kilometres south of Perth’s CBD.
The property had a 2.8-year Weighted Average Lease Expiry (WALE), with about 81% of the shopping centre’s gross income derived from the Coles Group.
Centuria said this Coles supermarket’s Moving Annual Turnover (MAT) was 10.2% above the Urbis 2021 ‘Single Supermarket’ benchmark.
Centuria Head of Retail Bruce McCully said the Margaret River Shopping Centre added to Centuria’s strong convenience, neighbourhood shopping retail platform.
“The daily needs retail sector throughout Australia continues to experience strong tailwinds, underpinned by non-discretionary spending, which makes it somewhat resilient to wider economic impacts,” McCully said.
“In particular, this shopping centre supports a burgeoning local community with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showing the Margaret River region as having one of Australia’s fastest growing regional populations.
“The region benefitted from a robust 3.5% pa population growth between 2011 and 2021, significantly above Western Australia and Australia’s growth of 1.6%pa and 1.4%pa, respectively.
“These favourable metrics provide us with the confidence to execute a favourable value-add leasing strategy.”
The property will seed Centuria’s new single-asset, closed-ended wholesale property fund, Margaret River Shopping Centre Trust.
“This acquisition exemplifies how we are executing our corporate strategy to secure value-add opportunities to match specific profiles within our broad unlisted investor network,” Centuria Joint CEO Jason Huljich said.
“We are adopting a disciplined approach to our real estate transactions and are excited to offer this opportunity to our HNW investor base.”
The Margaret River Shopping Centre was originally built in 2001 by Coles Property Developments and has been maintained to a high standard.
CBRE’s James Douglas and Chloe Mason, and VPG Property’s, Craig Butler & David Walser represented the vendor.
The acquisition adds to Centuria’s existing $1.7 billion daily needs retail platform.
Last May, Centuria acquired the Cameron Park Plaza neighbourhood shopping centre in Newcastle in New South Wales from Woolworths Group for $60.25 million.
The group acquired a $202 million retail precinct within a major mixed-use development in Brisbane’s West End in January 2022, as well as the Hurstville Retail Centre development in Sydney for $41.5 million in December 2021.
