Portfolio expansion

September 30, 2014

Sentinel has recently completed its largest ever acquisition and capital raising with the $31.5 million purchase of the Menai Central retail complex in Sydney’s southern suburbs.

This opportunity proved extremely popular with investors, with the required equity committed in just eight days, highlighting the ongoing strong demand from our existing and new investors.

The Menai acquisition follows Sentinel’s settlement in June of a trophy commercial office building with a blue-chip international tenant profile at 555 Coronation Drive, just 3km from the Brisbane CBD, for $28.5 million.

These latest high-profile additions to our growing national property portfolio show that quality opportunities are still available in the current market and are highly sought after by investors.

The Menai Central acquisition is Sentinel’s third in New South Wales in 2013 and continues our active expansion into southern markets, where we are also currently investigating opportunities to secure our first Victorian property.

Menai Central also further strengthens our presence in the retail sector, where we now have a portfolio of five major retail centres in Queensland and New South Wales, all positioned in prominent high-growth locations with dominant national tenants.

The retail market, particularly the bulky goods/homemaker retail sector, has been a major focus of our opportunistic buying strategy over the past 18 months, as we believe it offers great value and strong value-add potential.

While the sector may have been out of favour since 2008, with many of the big funds selling out, a number of prominent retail centres have been picked up by very successful retailers turned property investors, such as Brett Blundy (who built some of Australia’s most well-known retail chains including Sanity, Bras n Things, Adairs and Dusk); Theo Karedis (founder of the Theo’s Liquor chain); and John Van Leishout (founder of the Super Amart discount furniture chain).

Sentinel shares their positive outlook for this sector and has been capitalising on the current ‘once in generation’ buying opportunities with a view to maximising income growth and returns for investors.  As well as our recent retail acquisitions, we also have some exciting news coming up regarding a major expansion of one of our centres with the addition of a new large format national retailer.