Retail

A brand new Woolworths shopping centre in the Illawarra-Shoalhaven region has sold before it had a chance to hit the public market.

In the biggest retail deal of the year, a Hong Kong private equity house is diving into the shopping mall market and paying a hefty discount to pre-pandemic prices.

The chance to buy property — big or small — in Hobart’s famed Salamanca Place is few and far between.

Investors have been slugged by interest rate rises but quality centres will perform as syndicators and big institutions chase different market segments.

A $20m property sale for the Broadmeadows Homemaker Centre will see the buyer collect $1.4m a year from tenants. And they weren’t the only ones after a piece of the once low-rent suburb.

Shopping centres are dragging customers back in and investors are following suit as big malls re-emerge as an attractive asset class.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent annually on new attractions to lure the punters into shopping centres and the owners of the former Myer Centre – now called Uptown – are going to splash $500m. But what will they be spending it on?

A fully-leased CBD asset anchored by Zap Fitness has attracted about two-dozen inquirers within a week of hitting the market.

The property development and investment firm co-founded by Alan Bond’s grandson, Banjo Bond, is buying a major large format retail centre in Perth.