Over $700m in WAPF: Australia’s largest direct property portfolio
AMP Capital announces the acquisition of Stud Park Shopping Centre in Victoria for $154 million.
The addition of the sub-regional shopping centre takes the value of the Wholesale Australian Property Fund (WAPF) to over $700 million, making it Australia’s largest direct property portfolio.
In this video, fund manager Christopher Davitt discusses the underlying reasons for acquiring Stud Park Shopping Centre and how this asset compares to others in the Wholesale Australian Property Fund. He also provides insights on the commercial property market and what the acquisition means for SMSF investors.
About Stud Park Shopping Centre
Stud Park Shopping Centre is an established centre situated in Rowville, approximately 30 km south-east of Melbourne’s CBD. Rowville is a large and established suburb comprising a diverse mix of residential, community, industrial and business park uses. The Centre is an approximate 26,000 square metre single level sub-regional shopping centre. Major anchor tenants include Woolworths, Coles and Kmart in addition to 58 specialty tenants and a council library. With over 1,500 car spaces, the buildings sit on approximately 11 hectares of land.
About the Wholesale Australian Property Fund
The Wholesale Australian Property Fund (WAPF) allows SMSF investors to access a diversified portfolio of quality Australian office, retail and industrial properties. Established in 1985, WAPF has 13 properties valued at approximately $700 million and aims to provide stable returns, made up primarily of income with some long-term capital growth. It targets assets which have high occupancy rates and stable income streams underpinned by leases to long-term, secure commercial tenants.
The leaders will gather in a vast conference center at Le Bourget airfield, near where Charles Lindbergh landed his Spirit of St. Louis aircraft in 1927 after making the first solo trans-Atlantic flight, a feat that helped bring nations closer.
Whether a similar spirit of unity can be incubated in Le Bourget this time is uncertain. In all, 195 countries are part of the unwieldy negotiating process, espousing a variety of leadership styles and ideologies that has made consensus elusive in the past. Key issues, notably how to divide the global bill to pay for a shift to renewable energy, are still contentious.
Signaling their determination to resolve the most intractable points, senior negotiators sat down on Sunday, a day earlier than originally planned, to begin thrashing out an agreement. They hope to avoid the last-minute scramble and all-nighters that marked past meetings.
The last attempt to get a global deal collapsed in chaos and acrimony in Copenhagen in 2009. It ended with Obama forcing his way into a closed meeting of China and other countries on the gathering’s last day and emerging with a modest concession to limit rising emissions until 2020 that they attempted to impose on the rest of the world.
Anxious to avoid a re-run of the Copenhagen disaster, major powers have tried this time to smooth some of the bumps in the way of an agreement before they arrive.
For one thing, the presidents, prime ministers and princes will make their cameo appearances at the outset of the conference rather than swooping in at the end.
Arriving in a somber city where security has been tightened after Islamist militant attacks that killed 130 people on Nov. 13, each leader will be allowed a brief opening speech, just a few minutes long. The goal is to build momentum for consensus and avoid the messiness of past talks when diplomats put off the hard political choices until their bosses arrived.
NEW APPROACH
But there are other significant changes in approach.
The old goal of seeking a legally binding international treaty, certain to be dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress, has been replaced by a system of national pledges to reduce emissions.
Some are presented as best intentions, others as measures legally enforced by domestic laws and regulations.
The biggest difference may be the partnership between the United States and China. The world’s two biggest carbon emitters, once on opposite sides on climate issues, agreed in 2014 to jointly kick-start a transition away from fossil fuels, each at their own speed and in their own way.
The U.S. and China “have both determined that it is our responsibility to take action,” Obama said after meeting Xi. “Our leadership on this issue has been absolutely vital.”
That partnership has been a balm for the main source of tension that characterized previous talks, in which the developing world argued that countries that grew rich by industrializing on fossil fuels should pay the cost of shifting all economies to a renewable energy future.
Now even China, once a leading voice of that club, has agreed to contribute to an internationally administered Green Climate Fund that hopes to dispense $100 billion a year after 2020 as a way to finance the developing world’s shift towards renewables.
If a signed deal now appears likely, so too is the prospect that it will not be enough to prevent the world’s average temperature from rising beyond 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
That is widely viewed as a threshold for dangerous and potentially catastrophic changes in the planet’s climate system.
Instead, the summit will produce a “long-term framework” for additional reductions down the road, Obama said in a Facebook posting on Sunday, with “targets set by each nation, but transparent enough to be verified by other nations.”
How and when nations should review their goals – and then set higher, more ambitious ones – must still be hammered out.
One sign of optimism was that Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi, a key player because of his country’s size and its heavy dependence on coal, will announce an international solar alliance of more than 100 sun-kissed countries, with the aim of raising India’s profile on solar power.
A handful of the world’s other richest entrepreneurs, including Bill Gates, have pledged to double the $10 billion they collectively spend on clean energy research and development in the next five years.