- The hotel is located in Canberra's south, close to the Parliamentary precinct.
- The Abode Woden is Serene Capital Hotel Fund 1's tenth hotel acquisition.
- The campaign attracted interest from a range of international and domestic investors.
The Abode Hotel and Apartments in Woden, Canberra, came to market earlier this year, with the expressions of interest campaign closing in March.
The property has now been acquired from Shakespeare Property Group by Serene Capital for $41.5 million.
The hotel was sold with a long-term lease to Iconic Hotels under its Abode brand, which is a division of Geocon, Canberra’s larger residential builder-developer.
Canberra hotel sector strong
Located at 10 Bowes Street, in Canberra’s South, the hotel is about 10 kilometres south of the Canberra CBD, and five kilometres from the parliamentary precinct.
The hotel comprises 152 self-contained apartment-style rooms, three conference rooms, and an all-day dining, in-house restaurant. It sits on a 1,516 square metres (sqm) Crown-land leased site.
“The Abode offered a lease return, which was attractive from a yield perspective. Underlying this is the strength of the Canberra hotel sector, corporate and Federal Government-related travel as well as significant domestic tourism,” said CBRE‘s Vasso Zographou.
The Abode Hotel and Apartments was the Shakespeare Property Group’s first hotel acquisition, according to Shakespeare Property Group Vice President – Hospitality Assets & Investments, Richard Saab.
“We are pleased to be able to deliver a solid 15.7% IRR net return to our investors. With circa $2 billion of commercial and hotel properties, we considered it timely to sell the asset and redeploy the capital to other investment opportunities,” said Saab.
The acquisition is the latest for Sydney-based investment manager, Serene Capital, which has over $750 million in assets under management and advisory across the hotel and office sectors. This includes an existing Canberra hospitality asset, the Adina Serviced Apartments Canberra Dickson.
“Serene Capital has recently re-opened the Serene Capital Hotel Fund 1 to new wholesale investors with a close date for applications of 30 September 2023 after raising $20 million earlier in the year. We are now starting to see hotel yields and value back at levels when we started the fund back in 2014,” said Serene Capital CEO and co-founder Glen Boultwood.
“Abode Woden is the tenth hotel acquired by Serene Capital Hotel Fund 1. The hotel’s defensive demand drivers surrounding government, health, education and infrastructure, combined with the lease income security and high yield add to the defensive nature of the fund’s income stream. Having not invested over the past five years due to the lack of perceived value, our discipline is continuing to pay dividends to new and existing investors in the fund,” added Boultwood.
