Billionaire John van Leishout to buy Fortitude Valley bulky goods centre for $100 million

Queensland billionaire John van Leishout is poised to buy Homemaker City Fortitude Valley centre for around $100 million from GPT.

The Fortitude Valley Centre measures 38,300 square metres of lettable space and was valued at $100.2 million as of June 30 2012 with 36 tenancies in place.

The centre brought in six-month income of $4.2 million delivering a capitalisation rate of over 9%.

Major tenants are Harvey Norman, Domayne, Nick Scali and Freedom Furniture.

Van Leishout made his fortune from discount furniture store Super Amart in Brisbane's outer suburbs.

The mooted sale, reported by the Australian Financial Review, comes as GPT sells its non-core assets.

Earlier this week GPT sold two other bulky good centres in its Queensland Homemaker City portfolio.

It sold The Homemaker City Jindalee to BB Retail Capital for $50.5 million and the Homemaker City Aspley to a private investor for $41.2 million.

The sales of the centres are being negotiated by Jones Lang LaSalle’s Australian head of retail investments Simon Rooney.

Rooney says bulky good centres represent strong buying opportunities for specialist investment groups following the withdrawal of institutional investors from the sector.

He says over $486.5 million of bulky goods centres sold in 2012, double the value of 2011

GPT’s head of investment management Carmel Hourigan says the sale of the non-core assets would further strengthen the quality of the retail portfolio and support the group’s move towards its target weightings.

“GPT is committed to portfolio weightings of 15% for logistics and business parks, 35% for office and 50% for retail,” says Hourigan.

“While these target weightings can be achieved through organic growth, GPT will also continue to look at strategic investment opportunities.”