News, Newsletters and Press

Welcome to the Leasing and Retail Technology News.

You are receiving this newsletter because, at some time in the past you have requested information from EPS or have attended a function run by us. This newsletter will be coming out on an occasional basis and will contain news and information about the Retail industry, focused primarily on technology and property leasing, EPS products and services.

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Today's newsletter contains information on our latest upgrade to the Retail Information Service and the interesting statistics that it provides about leases in the 40 largest shopping centers in NSW.

Please fee free to forward this message to your friends and colleagues. They can sign up for their own copy simply by entering their details in the sign up form to the left and selecting "go".

Major RIS Update

EPS's Retail information Service has just undergone a major update with over 1,000 new leases put onto the system in the last month. With a total of over 6,300 leases now on the system it provides an excellent insight into lease costs, terms and conditions at over 40 major NSW shopping centers. In the 24 months that the service has been available on-line many retailers and landlords have used the database to help them in the management of their retail leases.

If you would like to purchase an RIS subscription please contact Mike Wilkinson on 02 9419 836 or email him on mwilkinson@eps.net.au

With the details of so many leases at our finger tips, we decided to do a little investigation into lease costs.

How Much Is Your Neighbor Paying?

The chart below shows all of the leases for one of the centers on our database. The horizontal axis shows the size of the lease and the vertical axis shows the rent per square metre (psm) for each lease. While we expected there to be some differences in the rent psm paid based on location, and other factors, we were surprised at the size of some of the variations.

For instance around the popular 50 m2 size, some retailers are paying up to 4 times that of their neighbors. Even in the larger locations (say 200 m2) the most expensive leases still cost 3 times that of the cheapest leases. We believe that this shows some retailers are negotiating more effectively for their space.

Comparing the Landlords?

Another view of our database that we thought might be of interest is average rent psm by Landlord. Those of you who have been EPS customers for a while may remember that we have published similar charts in the past. Below is the current chart but the following historical comparisions are interesting:

• Westfield has been static in its rents ($1440psm in Q2 2001)

• QIC has been static in its rents ($1,246 psm in Q2 2000)

• Stocklands has been static in its rents ($1,030 psm in Q2 2001)

• AMP leases have seen an 11% rise in the past 12 months ($1,284 psm in Q2 2001)

Comparing the Categories?

So which of the retail categories pay the most? Comparing the chart below with its historical counter-part shows that relative rents for each of the different categories is the similar now to what it was 2 years ago.

Lease Expiries Coming Up

One of the ways that clients use the RIS service is to identify lease space that many be coming free in the immediate future. In the centres that we cover, more than 850 leases will be expiring in the next 12 months, with the next five months being the most active time of the year.

That's about it for this issue of the Leasing and Retail Technology News. If you have any questions or comments please give us a call on 02 9419 8356 or email us on info@eps.net.au.