Good morning. Here’s your daily round-up of the latest news and views from EG and a collection of real estate-relevant headlines from the national papers.
Going, going (almost) gone, one way or another. After months of offloading assets via auction, Home REIT is hoping to sell its last properties in a bulk portfolio.
The company is set to wind down after facing what its current team calls “unprecedented challenges” over the past few years. JLL and Allsop were hired earlier this year to handle property disposals. The company has approximately 1,100 properties left, valued at around £200m, according to analysis of stock market filings, although that figure could have changed in recent weeks.
Those remaining properties are now set to be marketed as a single portfolio.
Companies in myriad sectors are still grappling with what last week’s Budget means for their business. While supermarket group Farmfoods works it out, it has taken a step that will disappoint agents hoping to close a few more deals before the year ends.
The company sent a message to landlord-side agents on the day of the Budget saying that it is suspending “all work/progress” on certain real estate transactions until January 2025 at the earliest.
“Today’s Budget imposes considerable new and additional responsibilities on businesses – particularly those with large numbers of employees – and we intend to assess the ultimate impact these will have before signing to further commitments and expenditure,” the Farmfoods letter said. “The American election has the potential to create further economic uncertainty.”
Flex operators continue their expansion. Landmark is set to add to its Mayfair portfolio as the company looks to capitalise on the area’s growing popularity.
The company’s new location will be at asset manager W.RE’s 75 Grosvenor Street, W1, and is set to open in the first quarter of next year.
It will be Landmark’s second office on Grosvenor Street, along with the company’s 10,776 sq ft site at 49 Grosvenor Street.
Sascha Lewin, W.RE’s chief executive, described the deal as “the next chapter in the building’s storied 300-year history”.
The amount of venture capital invested in life sciences companies is on the up, according to Knight Frank. But Nicholas Blevins, the agency’s head of life sciences and innovation for occupational, leasing and development, cautioned against expecting a near-term translation into real estate demand.
“We are hitting an equilibrium as investors understand what valuations are for the businesses that they have been investing in,” Blevins said. “We’ve got to see three or four sustained courses of similar levels of investment [to the third quarter] before we will start seeing a significant uptick in demand.”
There’s also news on a shake-up in Knight Frank’s UK leadership team; a new tenant for an old Carpetright store; and this week’s EG Interview, with Network Rail Property’s Robin Dobson.
All of the news from EG, plus a selection of headlines from the nationals:
Home REIT preps portfolio sale of remaining properties
Supermarket chain puts property deals on hold in Budget aftermath
Flex operator Landmark doubles down on Grosvenor Street
Life sciences market starts to release handbrake in Q3
Meet the man running the biggest propco you’ve probably never heard of
Workspace sells mixed-use redevelopment site
Knight Frank picks first UK managing partner
£47m fund launched to unlock nutrient neutrality stalled homes
URW has time of its life with new deal
New Leadership Forum launched
EG Meets… Chas Barr of Haptic EPC
Barking Riverside secures £124m Homes England package
Watkin Jones adds 230 co-living beds in Leeds
Gym chain set to work out deal for Peterborough Carpetright store
Comer Homes gets approval to convert former HMRC office
Carlisle shopping centre to be sold from receivership
Taylor Wimpey on track to deliver 10,000 homes this year
Custodian moots start of ‘global upward swing’
Bank of England cuts rates but sees higher inflation after Reeves’s budget
Barclays says Bank of England to hold rates in December meeting
Government explores privately-funded Birmingham-Manchester rail link (£)
Housing associations ‘have no money to buy our affordable homes’ (£)
Feeling fine: the rise of ‘wellness real estate’ (£)
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