Centuria Funds Cash In with Office, Childcare Deals

Centuria Capital Group has moved to lock in gains, selling an office building and childcare centre to private investors for what it said were prices above book values.

The investment manager said the premiums reflected strong demand for well-located commercial properties benefitting from urban regeneration and close to housing, schools and universities.

The Belltower office building at South Eveleigh, NSW, fetched $18.25 million this month, 14 per cent above book value, Centuria said.

The 1148sq m office building at 6 Cornwallis Street had undergone extensive refurbishment and was sold with vacant position.

Meanwhile in Queensland, a Gold Coast childcare centre at 60 Investigator Drive, Robina, achieved $8.8 million at auction in late March, a 4.7 per cent premium to book value and 21 per cent more than its 2020 purchase price.

Book value is the asset’s value in the company’s accounting records.

The centre, which Papilio Early Learning and Kindergarten operate, is 100 per cent occupied on a net lease term with CPI-linked positive rent reviews and a 12.8-year WALE.

Centuria head of funds management Ross Lees said they had a “long-held investment strategy to secure well-positioned commercial real estate where value-add initiatives can be implemented to capitalise on excellent community infrastructure, public transport and road arterials.

“The South Eveleigh and Robina assets are exemplary of this strategy and further benefitted on long-term regeneration programs. These assets lend themselves to the work-live-play rhetoric, which we believe was appealing to their new owners.”

The Belltower—bought in 2016 for $3.3 million—was part of Centuria’s unlisted, closed-ended Australian Technology Park (ATP) Fund. It was built in 1887 as part of the Eveleigh Locomotive Workshop’s Manager Office, with the bell signalling the start and end of the railyard working day, Centuria said.

▲ The childcare centre at Robina was sold for $8.8 million at auction.

In the early 2000s, it formed part of a wider regeneration masterplan, transforming the area into a technology precinct that now includes the Commonwealth Bank, Channel 7, CSIRO’s Data61, Cicada Innovations, and the University of Sydney Institute of Agriculture and School of Life and Environmental Sciences.

The childcare centre, meanwhile, is within the masterplanned Robina Health Precinct, benefitting from the Robina Hospital and Robina Town Centre’s retail and leisure precinct and close to Robina State High School and other private and public schools.

It was part of the Centuria Diversified Property Fund (CDPF).

Knight Frank’s Jonathan Vaughan and Tim Holtsbaum and Karbon Property Josh Watts and James McCourt were the appointed sales agents for The Belltower, and Burgess Rawson’s Natalie Couper was the auctioneer for the Robina childcare.

The two sales followed shortly after assets under management at Centuria reached a peak of $21.2 billion.