ARA Asset to sell former Manulife Centre

The 11-storey office building is over 241,000 sq ft and is being sold for about $800 million.

Property fund manager ARA Asset Management and UK real estate group Chelsfield are selling their jointly owned Singapore office building for around $800 million or $3,319 per sq ft, reported Bloomberg citing people with knowledge of the matter.

Located near the Orchard Road shopping belt and a mere 10-minute drive to the financial district, the 11-storey building spans over 241,000 sq ft and currently houses tech giant Alibaba Group Holding as well as its Southeast Asian online shopping unit, Lazada Group.

ARA and Chelsfield acquired the building under an equal partnership for $555.5 million in 2019.

Previously known as the Manulife Centre, the building was renamed to 5One Central after the purchase. It was later rebranded as Lazada One in June, after the e-commerce company and its parent company leased 140,000 sq ft of space while waiting for the completion of their own building within the financial centre.

Office buildings in Singapore remain prized assets even after landlords across the globe were significantly affected by the rise of the work from home trend.

In fact, several tech firms, such as ByteDance and Amazon, have made Singapore their base as they expand their presence into Southeast Asia.

Real estate consultancy firms Knight Frank and Savills pointed that rents within the city-state are bottoming out even though the return to the office has been slow.

In its November report, Savills noted that top-flight office rents ended their six consecutive quarterly decline in the third quarter of 2021.

The office market could register rental gains of between 25% and 30% by 2025, said a JLL Singapore report in September.

Source: CommercialGuru, 15 Dec 2021