Fashion capital property sell-down offers retail opportunities to suit all investors

Some of suburban Auckland’s best retail sites within the upmarket Rialto Centre, a boutique shopping and cinema complex in the heart of the Newmarket retail precinct, are up for sale through leading real estate agency Bayleys.

The centre’s current owner, Ladstone Developments, is offering a range of 10 freehold investment properties for sale - including a bank, fashion clothing retail outlets and the Rialto’s cinema complex.

Five of the sites being auctioned have rentals of less than $125,000 - making them accessible to smaller investors and family trusts, says James Chan of Bayleys Auckland who is project managing the sales.

“It’s an opportunity for smaller to medium sized investors to own a slice of prime piece of real estate in the retail heart of Newmarket which would normally be out of their reach,” Mr Chan said.

The Rialto properties will be among some 30 retail outlets from all over Auckland that will be auctioned by Bayleys on September 22. They are among more than 90 properties featured in Bayleys’ latest Total Property national commercial and industrial portfolio.

The 7,490 sq m Rialto Centre has 25 fashion, homeware and lifestyle stores, a recently refurbished seven-screen art house cinema complex, and an extensive food court. Chan says the Rialto Centre is located on an extremely high profile site at the cross roads of two major arterials, Broadway and Khyber Pass.

The properties for sale are located in two separate blocks within the centre - one facing Broadway, Newmarket’s main street, and the other on the newly developed cosmopolitan Osborne Street precinct, a boutique retail strip offering a pedestrian lane shopping experience.

The properties feature such well-known retail brands ANZ Bank, Bendon’s flagship New Zealand, Cue and Specsavers. The 1,985m² cinema complex on the first floor is up for tender with a 10 year lease to Rialto Cinemas from December 2005, with rights of renewal for a further 10 years. It is producing net annual rental income of $365,369.

“Rialto is situated on the western side of Broadway - home to many of the larger, longer-term tenants in Newmarket, and where most of the centre’s top tenants are now consolidating because this section of the main strip has the heaviest foot traffic.”

James Chan says the Rialto Centre is located within a block that is particularly popular with fashion retailers and shoppers.

 “The success of Newmarket as a top-end retail zone is partly due to the large working population of approximately 20,000 in the immediate area and the affluence of surrounding suburbs such as Remuera, Parnell, Epsom," says Chan.

“However, it has also established a well earned reputation as the ‘fashion capital’ of New Zealand - so it attracts shoppers from all over Auckland as well as visitors from outside the region. It means it also has a vast range of national and international retailers and the highest volume of pedestrians outside of the CBD.”