Inner West Shopping Centre Sells For More Than $35 Million

A local private investor has shown confidence in Melbourne’s booming inner west with the $35.1 million acquisition of Sunshine Plaza Shopping Centre.

The sale was negotiated by Colliers International’s Senior Executive – Retail Investment Services, Tom Noonan, and Head of Retail Investment Services, Lachlan MacGillivray, on behalf of MTGRP, L.L.C as Mortgagee exercising power of sale.

Mr Noonan said the Sunshine Plaza sale was the largest Victorian neighbourhood centre transaction to occur this year and the third in as many weeks, following the recent sale of Coburns Central and Maroondah Village.

He said the string of recent sales demonstrated the strength of buyer interest in supermarket-anchored retail investments.

“The enquiry that we received from buyers during the sales campaign was the strongest we have ever experienced for a neighbourhood shopping centre, with excess of 130 enquiries received, 35 confidentiality agreements executed and 12 bids received at the close of the EOI period,” Mr Noonan said.

[urbanRelatedPost][/urbanRelatedPost]Sunshine Plaza is a recently refurbished convenience-based shopping centre on a significant land holding in the retail core of Sunshine Town Centre, just 12km from the Melbourne CBD in the rapidly growing inner west.

The 15,376sqm complex is anchored by a 3,508sqm Woolworths and 1,655sqm Aldi supermarket plus eight mini majors and 44 specialty tenants.

“The local purchaser identified that the opportunity to acquire a value-add shopping centre in Victoria, let alone metropolitan Melbourne, was extremely rare and as a result submitted an unconditional offer in a highly competitive bidding process,” Mr Noonan said.

The sale of Sunshine Plaza follows last month’s sale of Coburns Central to QIC for $26.05 million, which was sub-6.5%, and Maroondah Village, which was sold to a private investor for $13.3 million on a passing yield of less than 6%.

Mr Noonan said the increased activity was being driven by the historic low cost of debt, improved tenant demand and growing consumer confidence.

“Over the past 15 months we have transacted over $1 billion worth of Victorian shopping centres with all centres selling at above valuation reinforcing the strength of the Victorian market," he said.

“Despite the strong enquiry and bidding we continue to receive from offshore, particularly the Asian market, local private investors and institutions were the purchasers in 100% of all Victorian shopping centre transactions recorded in 2014.

“We have seen a number of major Australian banks show increased appetite for retail property and therefore this has allowed the local investors to bid more aggressively in what is an already very competitive market."