MAB Sells Shell Service Station on West Gate Freeway
Click here to read the original article by Simon Johanson for The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 August 2016.
MAB Corporation has offloaded a service station and convenience store complex on Melbourne’s West Gate Freeway for $22.5 million.
The Melbourne-based developer finished building the petrol and fast food outlet at the foot of the West Gate bridge on the city side earlier this year and partially leased the complex to Viva Energy Australia.
Viva controls Shell and Coles Express outlets and is a tenant on the site along with Hungry Jack’s and Red Rooster: all are on 15-year terms returning total net income of $1.41 million.
Savills Australia’s Clinton Baxter said the property sold to a local private investor on 5.5 per cent yield and was the largest sale of a petrol station anywhere in Australia for more than 10 years.
Mr Baxter handled the deal with colleagues Chris Jones and Ben Hegerty and Dawkins Occhiuto’s Andrew Dawkins and Walter Occhiuto.
Petrol and convenience stores have proved popular investments.
A Shell service station in Keilor returning net income of $391,000 sold for $7.7 million in June this year on a 4.94 per cent yield.
Another, a BP in Whitehorse Road, Blackburn, fetched $10.7 million on a 3.16 per cent yield.
Mr Baxter said petrol stations in built-up suburbs with high land values and development potential were selling on exceptionally tight yields.
Another BP-run petrol station in Box Hill is set to come on the market this month. That servo, at 843 Whitehorse Road, is in the suburb’s major development zone and expected to fetch more than $20 million.
The new generation of super-sized service stations on major highways were particularly tightly held, Mr Baxter said.
The MAB-developed facility sits on the Cook Street off-ramp to Port Melbourne, a major route for trucks heading to Webb Dock.
The location gives it exposure to more than 180,000 vehicles per day, Mr Occhiuto said.
Another large-scale service station and convenience hub is about 200 metres further along the highway. That facility is leased to United Petroleum.