Westfield owner Scentre Group which has seen its mall business thrive is now planning on making a dedicated push towards building high-rise apartment towers to address the country’s housing crisis, and also better utilise its vast land holdings.

Scentre has already received rezoning approvals at Westfield Hornsby in Sydney and Westfield Belconnen in Canberra.

Those approvals allow it to build several 53-storey residential towers at Hornsby and 28-storey towers at Belconnen, resulting in around 4000 new homes.

Scentre’s Chief executive Elliott Rusanow said that he was now focused on obtaining as many rezoning approvals as possible to allow for more high-rise towers to be built alongside its shopping centres.

Westfield Whitford City

 

“It’s fair to say that we’re in extensive dialogue with planning departments, state governments and local councils on housing supply needs and how we can contribute. This is something we are exploring across the portfolio,” Rusanow told The Australian Financial Review.

“The ultimate part of that business is eventually having people spend all of their time at our destinations and, effectively, that’s what the residential opportunity does.”

Rusanow noted that the expansion of Westfield Sydney and construction of the adjoining commercial and residential tower on the corner of Market and Castlereagh Streets in Sydney’s CBD continues, with new luxury brands progressively opening from the second quarter of 2025

On Wednesday, Scentre confirmed that in 2024 it received 526 million customer visits across its 42 locations in Australia and New Zealand, an increase of 14 million compared to 2023.

 

Scentre’s post-tax net profit soared to $1 billion, up from $174.9 million a year ago, as its malls saw a record level of sales during 2024 of $29 billion, $544 million more than in 2023.

“We continue to see strong demand from business partners with occupancy increasing to 99.6% at 31 December 2024, compared to 99.2% at the end of 2023,” said Rusanow.

“Longer term, the macro theme, which is the shortage of housing, is something we believe that we have an ability to contribute to [through] the solution to the housing supply shortage because of the strategic locations of each of our 42 destinations, and the ability to co-locate where people live to where people spend time,” added Rusanow.

Scentre’s Westfield properties are located on a total land holding of around 670 hectares, which demonstrates its vast development potential to convert them into mixed-use properties. It helps that these locations are already located near major infrastructure required to support those residential developments.