A local family buyer snapped up a Cheshire shopping centre prior to Allsop’s auction this week, for a figure above the £3.5m guide price.
The Green Oaks Shopping Centre in Widnes currently produces £762,400 – a gross initial yield in excess of 20% – but its largest tenant, TJ Hughes, has a rent review next year. Ten units have reversions over the next three years, and six have rent reviews due over the same period.
Tenants include Holland & Barrett, Vodafone, Peacocks and Royal Bank of Scotland (lot 75).
The high-value lot, which had previously been on the private treaty market, helped Allsop to a total of £61.9m from the 2 November sale and a success rate of 80%.
Another shopping centre, the Moorlands Shopping Centre in Leek, Staffordshire (lot 27) sold for £2.75m – a net yield of 14.5%, from a guide of £2.8-£3m.
Partner and auctioneer George Walker said professional trade buyers were particularly active during the sale and bid more aggressively than private cash buyers rattled by inflation.
“The trade buyers have finance. They don’t worry about sentiment. Private investors didn’t have the energy they had in September, when there was less chat [in the press] about rising costs,” he said.
Twenty-two lots sold for more than £1m.
Appetite for inflation-proof assets proved strong when a library in Colliers Wood (lot 18) let to Merton Council until 2043 with RPI-linked reviews went under the virtual hammer with a guide of £1.59m. It sold for £1.7m, equivalent to £200 psf, a yield of 3.3%.
“It’s not the kind of yield you expect at auction,” Walker said.
A sought-after trade counter in Swindon sold almost as well, achieving £185 per sq ft. It was guided at £425,000-450,000 and sold for £613,000, a net yield of 4.6%.
Quadrant Estates continued to dispose of its Boots portfolio through the auction, with 11 of 15 shops offered finding buyers and at least a further two expected to sell post-auction.
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