Could Perth offices be back in vogue?
Perth office towers are beginning to trade at a brisk pace with two major complexes attracting buyers in deals worth more than $250 million in total with both local and international investors chasing deals.
In one play, the listed Elanor Investors Group is targeting the purchase of a complex held by a Charter Hall-managed trust, WorkZone West, for just over $125 million as it looks to grow its property empire to more than $1.1 billion of assets.
Meanwhile, an offshore group is in due diligence to buy Perth’s Optima Centre, a two-building office campus being sold by BlackRock for about $130 million.
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In the Charter Hall deal, its Direct WorkZone Trust is selling an A-grade office building on the fringe of Perth’s CBD that spans a net lettable area of 15,602sqm.
The deal on the WorkZone asset, which is fully occupied and has a weighted average lease expiry of more than seven years, will show a yield of about 7%.
The campus-style office sits adjacent to McIver train station and is being sold by Savills, which declined to comment.
The building has floor plates of 2400sqm and a weighted average lease expiry of about eight years with the CIMIC Group as the major tenant.
WorkZone East and West are a pair of office buildings developed by Charter Hall in 2013 on a large site just to the north of the CBD.
Charter Hall last year sold WorkZone East tower to Sydney boutique property house CorVal Partners for $68.25 million.
Elanor has been active and earlier this year its office fund bought the Campus DXC complex in Adelaide’s Felixstow for $35 million.
The Optima Centre drew a strong field of bidders out of Korea with one of these groups believed to be heading the bids. The A-grade building in Herdsmen Business Park was completed in 2010 and was last bought by private equity real estate group MGPA for $105.67 million in 2013.
The fully leased, two-building office campus has 16,116 sqm of office space and occupies a 9459sqm site just 5km from Perth’s CBD.
The property is being sold by appointed agents Colliers International and JLL, who declined to comment.
The Optima Centre has an annual net income of about $9.03m from a clutch of blue-chip tenants which give the office building a weighted average lease expiry of 11.8 years.
The Korean groups were drawn to the complex by a lease renewal that would see the WA government occupy about 83% of the net lettable area until mid-2032. Canon Australia and building company ABN Group occupy about 15%.
This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.
