Wizel Invest has bought Berwick Marketplace shopping centre.
Property tycoon Max Beck is leading a group of prominent investors who have backed fund manager Wizel Invest’s $26.1m purchase of Berwick Marketplace shopping centre in Melbourne’s southeast suburbs.
The billionaire developer is the highest-profile supporter of the acquisition, which was the first major publicly-participated investment undertaken by Wizel Invest, led by former CBRE national directors Mark Wizel and Lewis Tong.
The property was sold by a Melbourne-based investor via Mark Ryder and George Harris of Ryder Commercial and Steven Lerche and Steve Bolton of Savills.
Mr Ryder cited the rarity of Woolworths-anchored metropolitan neighbourhood centres and the buyer’s ability to execute. Mr Lerche noted the depth of capital seeking supermarket-anchored retail in Victoria.
The 4,647sq m neighbourhood shopping centre is anchored by Woolworths and BWS, occupying about 75 per cent of the space. Woolworths is secured on an initial ten year lease and three ten year options. It generates about $1.63m in net income.
The deal was also supported by Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth-based private investors and family offices, with the capital raising 52 per cent oversubscribed.
Berwick Marketplace was held for almost three decades and traded on an initial yield of about 6.32 per cent, at a time when deals for Victorian neighbourhood shopping centres are showing yields in the mid-5 per cent range.
Wizel Invest associate – investor relations Jun Tan said the group had been attracted to the opportunity to acquire a strongly-performing supermarket-anchored centre at what it considered an attractive risk-adjusted entry point.
“Our interest in Berwick was fundamentally driven by the real estate, the quality of the supermarket income and our assessment of the price relative to comparable neighbourhood shopping centre transactions,” Mr Tan said.
“The acquisition price reflected the sub-five-year remaining lease term to Woolworths at the time the property was brought to market. We saw that differently, as an opportunity to acquire a high-quality metropolitan supermarket asset at a compelling entry yield.”
Berwick Marketplace is one of a small group of centres developed during when Woolworths was chasing its larger Marketplace concept across several locations around Australia. It sits on a 6,528sq m land parcel and the buyer believes that convenience shopping will become a larger part of the market.
The deal follows a surge in supermarket-anchored retail, including the recent $300m Oceana portfolio transaction, and convenience retail taking off as big players like Charter Hall expand.
Mr Wizel and Mr Tong have spent six years acquiring, repositioning, and divesting commercial property alongside Australian and Asia-based private capital. They have invested alongside interests associated with prominent private property groups and families, including Hudson Conway Limited, the Deague family, Riverlee, Malaysia’s Lau family and Mai Capital.
Mr Tong said the support received for Berwick was encouraging but represented the beginning of the group’s responsibility to its new investor base. “Our focus now is on executing the investment strategy and rewarding the confidence those investors have placed in Wizel Invest,” he said.