Bunnings puts new Melbourne store up for sale

Bunnings Warehouse has put one of its Melbourne’s stores on the market in a rare opportunity to secure a property leased to the hardware giant.

The property at Clyde North, in Melbourne’s south-east is the first completed Bunnings store to be sold on the market in metropolitan Melbourne since 2015, according to agents who are marketing the property.

Located in one of Melbournes’ major growth corridors, the 16,634sqm store opened last month and is being sold with a new 12-year lease at a net annual income of $1.9 million and with fixed 2.5% annual rent reviews.

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Bunnings outlets have been increasingly scarce on the investor market over the past two years, with only a handful offered and sold, and on very tight yields.

In December a Bunnings at Glenorchy in Tasmania sold for more than $14 million on a yield of just 3.13%, while in June another property at Victor Harbor in South Australia fetched $21.3 million on a yield of 5.13%.

The Clyde North store occupies a 3.756ha site on Berwick-Cranbourne Rd, and has four street frontages and parking for 372 cars.

CBRE’s Justin Dowers, who is marketing the property with Mark Wizel and Kevin Tong, says the Bunnings name and lease covenant speak for themselves.

“This is clearly a quality property with a blue chip tenant, a brand new building and a new long-term lease within one of Melbourne’s key growth areas. It would be difficult to find another property which is so quintessentially defined as a prime commercial property investment,’’ Dowers says.

“I have absolutely no doubt that the rare opportunity to buy a Bunnings store will attract considerable attention, particularly in the current low yield investment environment.”

The new store is a major component of MAB Corporation’s 30ha master-planned Element Park development and adjoins a new large format retail precinct with more than 8500sqm of retail space.

Wizel says the potential for the area is enormous.

“The new Bunnings store will obviously benefit from the current 11,000 cars which pass the store daily, a figure which will increase to 25,000 by 2041 when the population of the City of Casey is expected to swell to over 500,000,” he says.

The property is being sold through international expressions of interest, which close on Tuesday, November 12.