Tower Property Fund purchases second biggest asset

DeVille is situated in the heart of Durbanville, on the corner of Wellington and Durban Roads and consists of 2,500 square metres of office space and 13,500 square metres of retail space with PnP, Clicks and Virgin Active as the anchor tenants.

"The purchase of DeVille is in line with Tower's stated intent to add to our A Grade convenience space. This A-grade retail property was refurbished three years ago and the anchor food retailer has been reporting positive turnover growth," says Marc Edwards, CEO of the Tower Property Fund. "Tower sees tremendous opportunity for growth in the office space component of DeVille as there are benefits to the office tenants by having access to the retail shops and gym. Durbanville is a high quality node and Tower are confident that smaller companies will benefit from operating out of the DeVille office space."

New management

"The management of the DeVille building has been awarded to Spire Property Management and we are confident that the centre will continue to move from strength to strength under Spire's supervision, and that the few vacancies which exist in the office space upstairs will quickly be filled."

Tower has also recently acquired Clifton Place in the Berea node of KwaZulu-Natal at an attractive price of R80.5m. Clifton Place is a desirable office property in a busy commercial node and Tower anticipates a positive income growth in the future.

Tower listed on the JSE in July 2013 and has grown from R1.65-billion to R2-billion - a 20% growth in the portfolio in just over seven months. Management are confident of ongoing growth with a strong pipeline of industrial, retail and office properties.

"This pipeline of properties is coming from the private sector where landlords are prepared to take a percentage of Tower shares as currency for the transaction. As Tower is a REIT, holding the shares provides vendors with capital gains tax relief as well as diversification from single property risks," concludes Edwards.