Futureal has announced that it has sold its Sziget Centre shopping mall located in Hungary to OTP Property Investment Fund. This transaction has taken place as part of a deal to also buy the Skypark office building. The Sziget Centre is located at the centre of Csepel Island near to Budapest. The Shopping mall is also next to Tököl airport. The Sziget Centre has a customer base derived from more than 90 thousand residents in the nearby settlements.
Over the course of the past two and a half years Futureal has managed to pull of the successful repositioning of Sziget Centre and in doing so have attracted a number of larger brands to the shopping mall. This repositioning has led to a tripling of the leasing income of the shopping mall. Futureal purchased the Centre in 2014 and was the successfully repositioned in order to improve their tenant mix. During the last three years the shopping mall has attracted big retail brands like C&A and H&M as well as Jysk, Pepco and Euronics. These high profile tenants have managed to increase the leased area of the shopping mall by more than 9,000 square meters.
At the moment the Sziget Center is the largest retail centre on the Csepel Island and it is thought that the competition for this title is unlikely in the immediate future. The repositioning process occurred in order to strengthen the convenience offering and creating a strong supply of fashion labels. These changes have led to the leasing income of the shopping mall tripling. The Sziget Center is ideally located and has a great infrastructure which will allow it to add even more international retailers and boost their offerings in the future.
The OTP Property Investment Fund has been the most popular product in its market for several years. However, the investment group needed to change to match the trends on the real estate market. Because of this the company have decided on a long term process that will allow then to develop their investment portfolio.
