WEDNESDAY, 11.30AM
ONE of SA’s largest poroperty owners, Anglo American Property Services (Ampros), has dealt a severe blow to the country’s struggling city centres, by announcing it will sell all its central business district properties in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town.
Ampros’s three listed vehicles, Apex Property Fund, Compass Property Holdings and Anglo American Properties (Amaprop), will sell al their downtown office buildings. Apros’s remaining listed company, Main Street Property Fund, will retain its retail focus, Ampros MD Gerald Leissner said on Monday.
The sell-off comes after years of business flight from city centres into the suburbs, which have forced Ampros to write down its properties by about R340-million, and led it to post losses of R49-million and R8,8-million over the past two financial years. Said Leissner: “The objective of the disposals is to accelerate Apex’s strategy to become a decentralised office fund, to bring greater focus to Compass and to restructure Amaprop’s portfolio to exclude direct property investment.”
Analysts are sceptical of Ampros’s chances of realising anything like the true value of its buildings in the current depressed market, and when several other institutions have been selling off property.