Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW) has sold the Westfield Santa Anita shopping mall in Arcadia, California, to an established commercial real estate investor who owns other retail assets in Southern California.
The sale price of $537.5 million (at 100%, URW share 49%), funded by the investor through a combination of equity and new debt, reflects a sub-6% net initial yield and a 10.7% discount to the latest unaffected appraisal.
Westfield Santa Anita, an asset in URW’s US regional portfolio, is an A rated, 1.48 million square foot property, which is 96% leased and posts sales of $611 per square foot. The property’s H1-2022 tenant sales reached 93% of 2019 levels.
The transaction is the largest for a mall in the US since 2018, according to Eastdil Secured, who advised URW.
The sale of Santa Anita marks ongoing progress in the streamlining of URW’s regional asset portfolio, part of the Group’s comprehensive deleveraging program that includes the radical reduction of its financial exposure to the US.
In total, URW has made $0.9 Bn (URW share) of disposals in the US since 2021, including Westfield Santa Anita, the site of the former Promenade Mall (San Fernando Valley, CA), the Palisade residential building (San Diego, CA), and the ownership transfer of five other regional properties. In Europe, URW has already made €3.2 Bn (URW share) of its €4 Bn target of disposals.