KEY POINTS:
Longer leases and rising rents helped listed landlord National Property Trust push up the worth of its real estate by $29.5 million to $298.7 million.
New general manager John Crone said these were highly favourable times for real estate.
"Extended leasing terms, the attraction of high quality key tenants across the portfolio and renewing rents at market rates have contributed to the valuation uplift," he said.
"The increasing attraction of New Zealand property to the international investment community also continues to have a positive impact on valuations with large Australian investors buying properties at higher prices and lower yields, driving the valuation of neighbouring properties higher."
The trust's Rialto cinema-shopping centre and adjoining Carlton DFK Tower in Broadway, Newmarket, rose in value by $700,000. Tauranga's Goddards shopping centre and Dumbarton office block next door was up from $13 million to $14.7 million.
But the trust's best performer was the AA Building in Albert St, central Auckland. Its value rose from $28.6 million to $36 million.
The Baldwin's Building in Wellington went from $25 million to $29 million and Christchurch's Eastgate Shopping Centre was up from $73.4 million to $87 million.
These gains were in contrast to devaluations National suffered last year when it wrote down the value of its portfolio by $17.5 million.
That meant National breached its trust deed, which banned it from borrowing more than 45 per cent of the gross value of its assets. It had borrowed 47 per cent.
But since then, a $35 million capital raising exercise from unitholders and and an associate of the trust's manager helped to reduce debt and changed the trust's outlook.
National, controlled by St Laurence Property and Finance which owns the management and has a big stake in the trust, is looking to the new portfolio investment regime from October 1 to improve investors' fortunes.
Kevin Podmore, chairman of the trust's manager, said National's unitholders would benefit from portfolio investment entity status, which would help investors regardless of which tax rate they were on.
"Returns to all New Zealand investors in the trust will now be more attractive, particularly those on higher tax rates," he said.
National's annual result is due out on July 31. The trust, with a market capitalisation of $96.5 million, was trading between 75c and 81c yesterday.
