Total sales at Acuitus fell by more than a quarter in 2019 as political uncertainty caused volumes to dry up.
Acuitus said that sales receipts for 2019 stood at £177m – a 25.6% fall compared with the previous year, when Acuitus raised a total of £238m, and half the £353m it raised in 2017.
The reason for the steep decline was a sharp fall in sales volumes, which sank to 220 in 2019 from 392 a year earlier.
Nonetheless, Acuitus’s success rate rose slightly to 83.6%, with the firm selling a total of 220 of the 263 commercial properties it offered in 2019.
This compared with 2018, when Acuitus achieved a success rate of 83.4%, selling 392 of the 470 lots offered.
“Our first auction of the year was held amid huge uncertainty ahead of the expected March Brexit deadline, and our final sale was the day before the General Election, so this success rate is testament to both the quality of assets we brought into the room and the depth of investor demand,” said Acuitus chairman and auctioneer Richard Auterac (pictured).
“In line with real estate capital markets as a whole, volumes were down year-on-year, but it’s hard to believe that this positive trend will do anything other than strengthen now that political uncertainty has been removed for the foreseeable future,” he added.
In its final sale of the year, on 11 December, Acuitus raised £21.6m, selling 31 of the 38 lots it offered.
Notable sales included Kingstanding Shopping Centre in north Birmingham, a 48,000 sq ft open-air mall comprising 23 shops and parking for 70 cars, which sold for £1.52m, slightly higher than its £1.5m guide price.
The first Acuitus auction of 2020 will take place on 12 February at the Montcalm Hotel, W1.
