BlackRock, Centuria towers, Zenith, on the market for $400 million
Joint landlords Centuria and BlackRock have put up their landmark office buildings in Sydney’s north shore, the Zenith office towers, for sale with a price expectation of about $400 million two years after they bought the real estate.
In 2016, the pair acquired the twin towers, which comprise 44,102 square metres of office space, from another set of co-owners, Dexus Property Group and the GPT Wholesale Office Fund for $279 million.
The A-grade buildings are key elements in the Chatswood CBD, and sit across a 7990 sq m site at 821 Pacific Highway.
The 21-storey towers are fully occupied with a weighted average lease expiry of 4.4 years. Tenants include Property NSW, the federal government, Lendlease and Sage.
They are connected by an atrium and feature informal meeting areas, outdoor space, a childcare centre, end-of-trip facilities, conference facilities and security services.
Centuria holds half of the property in the Centuria Zenith Fund while a fund managed by BlackRock owns the other half.
Knight Frank’s Tyler Talbot and Ben Schubert and CBRE’s Michael Andrews and Scott-Gray Spencer are handling the expressions-of-interest sale campaign.
“The investment will show a purchaser a significant yield premium to both Sydney and North Sydney CBDs, while also capitalising on the continued strong Sydney metropolitan rent growth driven by increased demand and the government’s record infrastructure spending,” Mr Talbot said.
The office vacancy in Chatswood is at its lowest levels since 2000 at about 5.5 per cent and will continue to fall, making the Zenith sale attractive to investors, according to CBRE.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is in the process of laying off about 500 employees globally as volatility hurts markets and investors chase low fee funds.
Centuria had been battling a proposed takeover of one of its managed real estate trusts by Propertylink before it became embroiled in a separate takeover bid by Asian logistics platform ESR for Propertylink.
