ANZO announces major lease transaction

April 12, 2010

AMP NZ Office Trust (ANZO), New Zealand’s largest listed investor in prime commercial office property, has confirmed the second-largest lease transaction in the trust’s 12-year history.

Chief executive Robert Lang said the Department of Corrections, an existing tenant, has signed a new six-year lease for approximately 11,500 sqm – the majority of the space in Wellington’s Mayfair House.

The new lease, commencing from the expiry of the Department of Corrections’ existing lease next month [May], will be at market rents, as determined by an independent valuation process.

It has increased ANZO’s portfolio weighted average lease term (WALT) from 4.5 years to 4.6, and reduced the lease expiry profile for the remainder of the 2010 year to 1.6 percent of portfolio area.

Corrections spokesperson Sara Mace said the new lease will be a win-win situation for both parties as Corrections was looking for cost-effective accommodation which would also assist its efforts to consolidate its staff from other sites into Mayfair House. Not having to shift, with the cost and associated logistics, was an added bonus.

Mr Lang said the Department of Corrections is one of ANZO’s 20 biggest tenants by area. As a single transaction, in ANZO’s history this new lease was exceeded only by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s 12-year and 15,000 sqm commitment to Pastoral House in 2004.

ANZO is managed by AMP Haumi Management Limited.