MA Financial Buys Half of Melbourne's The Glen

MA Financial has acquired a 50 per cent stake in The Glen shopping centre in Melbourne’s south-east from Perth-based property group Perron for $327.5 million, adding one of the city’s established retail destinations to its growing portfolio.

GALLERY

The Glen sits on 7.2ha at the junction of Springvale and High Street roads in Glen Waverley, on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong land, around 19km south-east of Melbourne’s CBD.

Jointly owned with Vicinity Centres, the centre is a significant piece of local infrastructure, attracting more than 15 million visitors and generating over $575 million in retail sales during the 2025-26 financial year.

The centre’s 76,471sqm gross lettable area includes long-term tenants David Jones, Target, Coles, Woolworths and Aldi, with Glen Waverley station just a short walk away.

For MA Financial, the acquisition expands its almost $5 billion retail real estate portfolio at a time when established shopping centres are becoming increasingly difficult to replace.

MA Financial managing director Andrew Coutts said the lack of new sub-regional and regional shopping centre development was supporting demand for existing assets.

“It doesn’t stack up from a feasibility perspective to buy land to build new shopping centres,” Coutts said.

The Glen itself has undergone significant investment in recent years. A $430 million refurbishment, including a new mall and food hall, was completed in 2020, followed by a $450 million residential development of three towers and 500 homes built above the centre.

That combination of retail, housing and transport has strengthened The Glen’s role within the surrounding community, while its low vacancy rate points to continued demand for the centre. Vacancy sits at around one per cent, compared with a national average of 2.8 per cent for large format retail assets.

MA Financial’s Chris Lock said only three regional shopping centres had traded across Greater Melbourne over the past decade, highlighting the scarcity of established assets of this scale.

The transaction is part of a broader resurgence in Australian retail property. More than $4.5 billion in regional shopping centres has changed hands this year, including $2.8 billion in Victoria, while large format retail transactions reached almost $7 billion in the 12 months to last year.

CBRE’s Simon Rooney, who handled the sale, said investor sentiment was improving as the supply of retail assets reduced.

With Coutts expecting further large format retail transactions before the end of the year, The Glen’s sale points to a market increasingly focused on established centres that already have the transport connections, retail mix, housing and community infrastructure needed to support their catchments.

Images via The Urban Developer