Westfield owner Scentre Group steps up plans to | Australian Markets

The boss of Australia’s largest retail landlord Scentre Group says the company is participating with governments and potential capital companions to rework its huge land holdings into 1000’s of new dwellings.

Scentre, which owns and operates 42 Westfield purchasing centres throughout Australian and New Zealand, just lately obtained rezoning approval at its Hornsby web site in Sydney and Belconnen in Canberra.

This might permit large-scale residential development of more than 2100 and 2000 dwellings, respectively, at these areas.

Meanwhile, Westfield Warringah in Sydney was declared a State-significant development in March with the potential to create about 1500 dwellings.

Delivering Scentre’s outcomes for the six months to June 30 on Tuesday, chief govt Elliott Rusanow described the group’s locations and 670 hectares of strategic landholdings as “key community infrastructure with the potential to deliver additional housing at scale”.

“We continue to progress our significant and long-term growth opportunities by utilising our prime urban land to create the town centres of the future,” he mentioned.

“Our landholdings could potentially supply a significant number of new dwellings in town centres where people already want to live and work.

“We are engaging with governments and potential capital partners on how we can realise these housing opportunities across our portfolio.”

Scentre reported funds from operations of $587 million within the first half of the yr, up 3.2 per cent on the identical time the prior yr.

The company upgraded distribution steering for the second half of fiscal 2025 to 8.905¢ a share, representing 3.5 per cent growth on 2024. For the primary half, it paid distributions of $459m, or 8.815¢ a share.

Scentre’s financial yr ends on December 31.

The improve got here on the back of an increase within the quantity of buyers visiting Westfield centres. Mr Rusanow mentioned there had been 340 million buyer visitations thus far for the present fiscal yr — 10 million more than the identical period final yr — and portfolio occupancy stood at 99.7 per cent, representing the very best degree since 2017.

The bump in clients helped retailers’ gross sales at Westfield malls bounce 2.9 per cent to $13.8 billion.

Net revenue for the six month period rocketed 93.7 per cent to $782.2m, which included an unrealised property valuation increase of $177m. As of June 30, the group’s portfolio was valued at $34.7b.

Shares in Scentre Group had been up 1.6 per cent to $4.06 in afternoon trade on Tuesday.