How Coles and Woolies are playing the property game

PHOTO: Coles has sold $240 million of neighbourhood shopping centres in the last two years.

Supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths aren’t known for being serious players in the property market but they are in full swing flipping real estate across the country.

Coles is in the midst of its property divestment strategy having sold at least $240 million of neighbourhood shopping centres in the last two years. That figure is likely to tick over the $300 million mark once it sell Coles Amaroo Village and Willowdale Shopping Centre for another $65 million.

Woolworths too has stepped up its sales having offloaded another of its shopping centres in Perth just this week for $27 million, making the most of strong investor demand for non-discretionary retail assets under $100 million, which are considered relatively insulated from the threat of e-commerce.

Last year its sale of a shopping centre in Perth’s outer suburbs transacted on the sharpest initial yield ever recorded for a neighbourhood centre in Western Australia over $20 million, at 5.8 per cent.