Prominent city-fringe office complex placed on the market for sale
The land and buildings housing the Hawke’s Bay headquarters for one of the world’s biggest accounting and financial
advisory companies, PWC, has been placed on the market for sale.
In addition to hosting PWC as the anchor tenant, the four-story office block on the corner of Raffles and Munroe streets
in Napier, houses 23 additional smaller tenancies – including Fuji, the Department of Internal Affairs, Barter Card,
alongside a range of small and localised professional services firms.
Combined, the 3,688 square metres of freehold commercial floor space generates net annual rental income of $496,064. The
building – which has a new build standards rating of 89 percent - sits on 1,152 square metres of fringe
commercially-zoned land, which also encompasses 33 on-site carparks.
A traffic monitoring survey reports that Monroe Street is one of Napier’s busiest arterial routes – carrying high
volumes of traffic in to and out of the city centre – while Raffles Street carries medium to high traffic volumes as a
link road to the suburbs.
The prominent corner property is being jointly marketed for sale by tender through Bayleys Napier and Bayleys Manukau in
Auckland, with tenders closing on November 2.
Salespeople Sam MacDonald and Ben Bayley said the predominantly rectangular-shaped office block was constructed in 2007,
and was split into four separate unit titles - which were being marketed for sale either individually or in any
combination permutation.
Unit one involves much of the ground floor and part of the first floor. The ground floor has two entry lobbies, two
12-person capacity lifts, and toilets, with a stairwell accessing both the basement and upper floor levels.
Unit two encompasses a single ground floor tenancy with frontage to Munroe Street and is occupied by the Caci Clinic.
Unit three on the first floor is separately owned and is therefore excluded from the listing.
Unit four is the entire second floor which is partitioned off into nine individual tenancies, while unit five is the
entire third floor occupied by PWC. The Napier branch is one of seven PWC regional locations in New Zealand – with the
firm employing more than 1300 people across the network.
All levels of the Munroe St/Raffles Street block have their own separate air conditioning systems. The basement car
parking level is accessed by a remote-controlled roller door, with lift and internal stairwell access to the upper
levels.
The building has been issued with a Code of Compliance Certificate by Napier City Council, and also has a building
warrant of fitness issued in 2016. Build reports show it was constructed of reinforced concrete foundations with
reinforced concrete precast panel walls, concrete and timber framing and long-run steel roofing.
Mr MacDonald said there was an opportunity to increase yield in the well-presented property by leasing the currently six
percent of vacant office space. The Napier City Council fringe commercial zoning identifies the CBD-belt around the
Munroe St/Raffles St locale as suitable for hosting commercial, retail and warehousing type activities.
“The property at 36 Munroe Street is considered to have a moderate risk profile in comparison with other commercial
properties in the locality. The weighted average lease terms of less than three years are shorter than would be expected
for this type of building, and improvement to the lease profiles would improve its risk rating,” Mr MacDonald said.
Mr Bayley said that while the building had experienced some early ‘teething issues’, these had been rectified and
appropriately acknowledged issuance of both the code of compliance certificate and the building warrant of fitness.
He said that additional cosmetic refurbishment to the basement level would further alleviate concerns about the
building’s overall condition. The basement level is 950 square metres, while the upper levels of commercial space are
all approximately 1000 square metres in size.
ENDS