Purchase of Wardrobe Court, EC4
British Land Further Expands London Residential Portfolio with
Purchase of Wardrobe Court, EC4
British Land announces that it has agreed to purchase Wardrobe Court, EC4, a 71,000 sq ft residential investment property in the heart of the City of London for £57 million, representing a capital value of £800 per sq ft.
Situated a few minutes walk from St Paul's Cathedral, Wardrobe Court is one of the few surviving early 18th century squares in the City of London. Sympathetically re-stored, Wardrobe Court is a Grade II listed cluster of buildings set around a cobbled courtyard, comprising 92 studio, one, two and three-bedroom serviced apartments along with a retail and office unit.
The majority of the property is let to BridgeStreet, a leading serviced apartment operator, until December 2014 with rent subject to annual uplifts in line with RPI, representing at purchase, a net initial yield to British Land of 4.7%. At the end of the lease, we have an opportunity to renew or relet as serviced apartments at a significantly higher rent, or to upgrade and sell-off profitably as private residential properties.
British Land has a long history of owning, managing and financing residential property and over the past two years, we have been progressively increasing our exposure to Central London, a market where investor and occupier demand has been and remains strong. With the purchase of Wardrobe Court, our exposure to high-end residential properties in Central London now stands at over £250 million. We have successfully pre-sold £89 million of our residential developments over the past year, including 70% of the luxury residential apartments we are developing as part of the NEQ development at Regent's Place.
Tim Roberts, Head of Offices at British Land said: "With this acquisition, we have acquired a collection of unique and well located residential properties, leveraging our experience in the London residential market. We are confident we can either attract a higher rent from a serviced apartment operator or upgrade and sell as private residential at a significant premium to our entry price."
CB Richard Ellis acted for the vendor.
Enquiries:
Investor Relations
Sally Jones, British Land 020 7467 2942
Media
Pip Wood, British Land 020 7467 2838
Guy Lamming/ Gordon Simpson, Finsbury 020 7251 3801
Notes to Editors
About British Land
British Land is one of Europe's largest Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) with total assets, owned or managed, of £14.9 billion (British Land share £9.6 billion), as valued at 31 March 2011. Through our property and finance expertise we attract experienced partners to create properties and environments which are home to over 1,000 different organisations and visited byover 250 million people each year. Our property portfolio is focused on prime retail locations and Central London offices which attract high quality occupiers committed to long leases. Our occupancy rate of 97.8% and average lease length of 11.5 years are among the highest of the major UK REITs.
Retail assets account for 66% of our portfolio, around 80% of which are located at prime out-of-town sites. Comprising some 27 million sq ft of retail space across 90 retail warehouse properties, 99 superstores, 12 shopping centres and 10 department stores, the retail portfolio is generally modern, flexible and adaptable to a wide range of formats. Active asset management delivers the attractive space to both retailers and consumers.
London offices, located in the City and West End, comprise 32% of the portfolio (rising to an estimated 37% on completion of current development). 7 million sq ft of office space includes Broadgate, the premier City office campus (50% share) and Regent's Place in the West End. We are also investing £1.1 billion to create Central London's largest committed office development programme which will deliver 2.2 million sq ft of high quality space by 2014, including a 700,000 sq ft building at 5 Broadgate, the 610,000 sq ft Leadenhall Building in London's insurance district and the 500,000 sq ft NEQ building at Regent's Place.
Our size and substance demands a responsible approach to business and we focus on five areas which matter most to us and our key stakeholders: managing buildings efficiently; developing sustainable buildings; enhancing biodiversity, exceeding customers' expectations and focusing on local communities. We believe leadership on issues such as sustainability helps drive our performance and is core to our corporate aim of building the best REIT in Europe.
Further details can be found on the British Land website at www.britishland.com
This information is provided by RNS
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