The biggest commercial property deals of 2016
A bumper year of commercial property sales received one last in the final week of December when Woolworths announced the sale of 527 petrol stations to BP for almost $1.8 million.
But that wasn’t the only major deal that made headlines throughout 2016.
Here are just some of the biggest sales to have been signed off last year.
Vicinity Centres selldown continues – $841.4 million
Few commercial investment groups anywhere in the world were as active as Vicinity Centres in 2016, with the company ramping up its divestment strategy and selling assets by the truckload.
The largest of Vicinity’s deals came in May, when it offloaded four malls in Victoria and Queensland for a combined $841.4 million, just a week after selling another Queensland shopping centre, Indooroopilly Central, for $85 million.
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American investment firm Blackstone snapped up three of the malls, paying $613.3 million for Forest Hill Chase Shopping Centre (above) and Brimbank Shopping Centre in Victoria, as well as Clifford Gardens in Queensland, while Mirvac bought Toombul in Queensland for $228.1 million.
Dexus sells Southgate complex – $578 million
It was no secret that commercial property heavyweight Dexus Property Group was all but certain to sell Melbourne’s Southgate complex to Singapore-listed ARA Asset Management.
The only blank left to fill in was the price.
Melbourne’s Southgate complex.
While figures as hefty as $600 million were floated, the final price for the complex, which includes the Herald and Weekly Times Centre, IBM tower and food and retail outlets along the Yarra River, was $578 million.
The deal represented a $102 million premium on what Dexus paid for the sprawling property in 2000.
Rinehart buys S. Kidman & Co – $386.5 million
The prize for longest-running saga of 2016 goes to the sale of the S. Kidman and Co portfolio of cattle stations, which took more than 12 months to win approval.
A deal to sell the collection of stations, which includes Australia’s largest landholding, the Anna Creek station, in November 2015, was thwarted when the Federal Government blocked the sale to China’s Shanghai Pengxin group on national security grounds.
Mining and farming magnate Gina Rinehart.
More than a year later, mining magnate Gina Rinehart teamed up with Shanghai CRED Real Estate Stock Co and saw off competition from some of Australia’s wealthiest farming families to secure the properties for $386.5 million.
The Kidman stations account for about 1.3% of Australia’s total land area, though Anna Creek was removed from the sale in order for it to proceed.
Blackstone goes big in Adelaide – $400 million
US firm Blackstone opened 2016 with a bang when it announced it had bought Adelaide’s mixed-use office and retail complex at 80 Grenfell St and Rundle Place for $400 million.
The deal, with transacted on a yield of around 6.5%, took Blackstone’s Australian holdings to more than $4 billion.
Adelaide’s Rundle Place sold as part of a $400 million deal.
Scentre snaffles iconic David Jones store – $360 million
There were few properties that generated as much interest as David Jones’ famous Sydney CBD store, which hit the market earlier in the year.
Unsurprisingly the price soared, with industry giants Scentre, Stockland and Cbus Property all bidding for the iconic building.
The David Jones store on Market St in Sydney attracted plenty of interest.
Scentre eventually won out, paying upwards of $360 million for the menswear destination, before approaching Cbus Property about the prospect partnering to develop a residential component in the historic property’s upper levels.
Ex-AFL star grabs Como Centre – $236.5 million
Former Hawthorn gun Chris Langford’s company Newmark Capital continued buying up major properties along iconic Melbourne retail strip Chapel St, this time purchasing the Como Centre from Mirvac for more than $236 million.
Mirvac has sold Melbourne’s Como Centre precinct.
Having paid around $165 million for the nearby Jam Factory in September 2015, Newmark Capital added the Como Centre to its portfolio in May.
The property includes a 2ha site on the corner of Toorak Rd and Chapel St in South Yarra, and includes 25,700sqm of A-grade office space, about 6650 sqm of retail, a 111-room hotel and a car park.
Investa invests in 420 George St – $600 million
It took a couple of bites at the cherry, but Investa Property Group finally took full control of the A-grade office building at 420 George St in Sydney, in a pair of deals totalling $600 million.
Investa Property Group bought 420 George St in two deals worth $600 million.
First the group’s main wholesale fund bought a 75% interest in the tower from a Fortius-managed fund for $442.5 million, before later purchasing the remaining 25% stake from Lend Lease’s Australian Prime Property Fund Commercial for about $150 million.
The sale of the 100% interest was touted as the largest deal done in Sydney in the last six years, and took Investa’s total office property management portfolio to around $10 billion.
