Mirvac Group, an Australian real estate investment trust, plans to raise A$500 million ($349 million) selling shares to investors to repay debt.

The trust will sell shares at 90 Australian cents each, 9 percent less than the last traded price, Sydney-based Mirvac said today in a statement to the Australian stock exchange. The trust also cut its fiscal 2009 earnings forecast as much as 46 percent as weak consumer sentiment and low home ownership affordability crimp Australian residential home sales.

Mirvac becomes the fifth Australian real estate trust to sell shares in the past month, joining Goodman Group and GPT Group. The property trusts have raised more than A$3 billion since October as the credit crisis freezes access to debt and property prices decline. The nation's benchmark real estate trust index has slumped 51 percent this year.

``In these uncertain and volatile markets the board and management have determined that it is prudent to pro-actively undertake a number of initiatives to strengthen Mirvac's balance sheet,'' Managing Director Nicholas Collishaw said in the statement.

Mirvac shares last traded at 98.5 Australian cents on Oct. 29 and were suspended from trading today. The stock has slumped 84 percent this year, cutting its market value to A$1.1 billion.

Earnings Forecast Cut

The 19-member S&P/ASX 200 A-REIT Index has plummeted, with three of the benchmark S&P/ASX 200's 10 worst-performing stocks coming from the sector, as property values drop in the wake of the U.S. subprime collapse and the global credit crisis. The world's biggest financial companies have lost or written down more than $684 billion since the start of 2007.

Mirvac cut its earnings forecast to 13.4 cents per security in fiscal 2009, from a previous forecast of 23 to 25 cents. The company expects to pay 100 percent of earnings as distributions.

GPT Group last month sold A$1 billion in shares at almost half its previously traded share price to repay debt as it struggled to sell about one-third of its A$14 billion in assets. The trust also offered A$250 million of exchangeable securities to Government of Singapore Investment Corp. and A$300 million to retail investors.

Goodman, Australia's biggest industrial real estate investment trust, plans to raise A$955 million selling shares to existing investors at 90 cents each, a 7.7 percent discount to its share price prior to the offer.

Stockland sold A$300 million to institutional shareholders Oct. 8 at A$5.30 apiece, about 7 percent below the previously traded share price. Stockland last traded at A$4.46.