Epping Home & Life, at 560-650 High St, Epping, has a new owner.
A retail and homemaker centre in Melbourne’s outer north has sold for an eye-watering $117.7m in a record-breaking deal.
Epping Home & Life, where tenants include Officeworks, TK Maxx, Planet Fitness, E&S Trading, Harvey Norman, Petbarn and Chemist Warehouse, has been snapped up by a Melbourne-based private investor.
The 26,550sq m centre’s sale is the priciest large format retail transaction in Australia this year, surpassing Chadstone Lifestyle Centre’s $86m sale in January.
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Large format retail (LFR) is generally classified as homemaker centres or a group of different retailers with their own stores or showrooms, in the one precinct.
The Epping sale has also been labelled the most expensive large format retail purchase in Victoria by a private investor, overtaking the Highpoint Homemaker centre in Maribyrnong changing hands for $80.5m in 2018.
Commercial real estate agency JLL’s Stuart Taylor, Nick Willis and Tom Noonan oversaw the Epping sale on behalf of the centre’s owner, fund manager Forza Capital.
Mr Taylor said other than Victoria, the property attracted buyers from states including New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia, a mix of real estate investment trusts, wholesale funds and syndicates among them.
The centre is 17km north of Melbourne’s CBD.
It’s across the road from the Pacific Epping shopping hub.
The centre at the corner of High St and Cooper St, set on a 7.4ha land parcel, has 28 tenancies and 783 car spaces.
Contracts for the deal have been exchanged and settlement is set to wrap following completion of building works for the centre’s incoming tenants, Rebel Sport and Supercheap Auto, in early 2027.
Mr Taylor said these days, it was not unusual for private investors to buy shopping centres.
“Well-capitalised private investors are now transacting at a scale that was once largely the preserve of institutions,” he added.
Kitchen, laundry, and bathroom products and appliances retailer E&S Trading is a tenant at the centre.
More than 30,000 vehicles pass by Epping Home & Life every day, according to its online listing.
Forza Capital purchased Epping Home & Life for $54.25m, in 2023.
Since then, they adopted a new master plan for the site and developed more than 7100sq m of new floorspace.
Forza Capital’s co-founder and director Adam Murchie described the sale as “a good result for our investors in a difficult investment climate”.
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