Real estate funds manager QIC is reportedly in talks to offload the Westpoint Shopping Centre in the western Sydney suburb of Blacktown.
It is in discussions to sell the property to fund house Haben and US investment group Hines for about $900 million.
Haben and Hines are raising a total of $520 million of equity to fulfil the purchase. Hines will pump in around $260 million into the deal as the joint venture capital partner and Haben, which would be manager, would invest $210 million.
A further $50 million would be available to local wealthy investors, reported The Australian.
Once completed, it will be the second largest individual asset transaction in Australia.
The deal is being brokered by Colliers agent Lachlan MacGillivray, and would be the first time in two decades that a deal of this size and scale for a mall is going through.
There is a strong case for the deal to go through. More than 87 per cent of the sprawling centre is occupied by national and listed tenants, including Woolworths, Coles, Aldi, Kmart, Target, Big W, Hoyts, JB Hi-Fi, TK Maxx, Harris Scarfe, Priceline, Rebel, Tong Li Supermarket and Uniqlo.
The shopping centre has an annual turnover of $652.9m and is located in a suburb that is set to see enhanced economic activity overall.
For example, Blacktown will see projects such as Walker Corporation’s multibillion-dollar Blacktown Quarter project close to the shopping centre. It will permanently add more than 4,500 jobs and $1 billion-plus annually to the Blacktown’s economy.
The shopping centre sits on more than 9ha of land in Blacktown’s prime business area. Its buyers could in the long-term consider undertaking mixed-use development on part of the site.
There hasn’t been any official confirmation yet from QIC or Haben regarding the deal.
There are a number of deals wherein shopping centres have changed hands across Australia earlier this year.
Retail real estate giant Vicinity Centres and its co-investor Challenger recently sold the Karratha City shopping centre in Pilbara, a remote region in Western Australia, for $95.9 million to a Melbourne syndicator.
Also this year, in Victoria, two neighbourhood centres – Wyndham Vale Square and Drouin Central – sold for a combined value of more than $45 million to local and interstate private investors.
In Australia, the largest shopping centre owners include Scentre Group, Vicinity Centres, QIC Real Estate, The GPT Group and ISPT.
This month, ISPT as part of a push to acquire smaller supermarket-anchored malls unveiled plans for a $250 million equity raising in the second half of the year. The amount raised will be used to fund acquisitions for its $2.5 billion ISPT Retail Australia Property Trust (IRAPT), which owns a portfolio of 49 sub-regional and neighbourhood centres, as well as to provide capital for the expansion and upgrade of existing centres within the trust.