Praxis has completed the purchase of an eight-asset office and business park portfolio from Blackstone for £65m.
The price for the 632,381 sq ft portfolio reflected a net initial yield of 8.2%.
It is let to 71 tenants that include Citibase, Capita Business Services and Shell UK. The vacancy rate is 23%.
The largest of the assets is the 124,000 sq ft Concord Business Park near Manchester Airport. The portfolio also includes Centric MK, Silbury Court and Workplace Systems, all in Milton Keynes.
Praxis has also acquired the Solent Centre – three office, retail and leisure properties on the Solent Business Park, located between Southampton and Portsmouth – as well as the Broadlands Business Campus in Horsham, and Overbridge Square, a part-vacant business park in Newbury.
Gary Roberts, head of capital markets at Praxis, said: “Not only does [the portfolio] provide us with a strong income component, but it also offers us the opportunity to actively manage the portfolio to increase value and maximise returns. We will be committing additional capital to these properties to increase their appeal to occupiers, with the principal objective of improving occupancy and increasing the net income.
“We are seeing an increasing number of opportunities like this where proactive asset management can be used to add value and we will look to deploy more capital into the market while the current market conditions continue to prevail.”
