Futureal has sold its Sziget Center shopping mall in Hungary to OTP Property Investment Fund as part of the deal that also saw the purchase of the Skypark office building. After a successful repositioning, the 23,600 m² center located on the outskirts of Budapest has managed to lure high-profile tenants and tripled its lease income over the last two and a half years, thus triggering interest from one of Hungary’s biggest property investment funds.
The Sziget Center shopping mall is located in the heart of Csepel Island near Budapest, next to the Tököl airport. Its customer base is over 90 thousand residents of the nearby settlements (Szigethalom, Szigetszentmiklós, Halásztelek and Tököl). The purchasing power of the area exceeds the Hungarian average and the consumption expenditures of the residents are forecasted to rise in the coming years. The accessibility of the area is excellent by car and public transport, suburban train line (HÉV) is only a few minutes away. Sziget Center is currently the largest retail center on the Csepel Island and the appearance of any competition is highly unlikely in the coming years.
Futureal purchased Sziget Center in 2014. Since then the shopping mall was successfully repositioned and has gained a well-balanced tenant mix. In the last three years the center has attracted several international tenants increasing the leased area by over 9,000 m². Among these newcomers there are international clothing store operators C&A and H&M, the decor and furnishing chain Jysk; clothing and household goods network Pepco, household products and cosmetics distributor Euro Family and electronics retailer Euronics.
Gábor Futó, founder of Futureal Group said: „In the past two and a half years, we have managed to perform a successful repositioning of Sziget Center by attracting the largest brands and thus tripling leasing income of the shopping mall. The essence of this process was to strengthen the shopping center’s convenience offering, while creating strong fashion supply. Thanks to the great infrastructure and location, the center is expected to bolster its supply with further international retail chains and increase its popularity among the residents of the area, becoming a truly dominant local center.”
