The owners of the Metquarter in Liverpool are set to bring the mall to market at a 70% discount to the price paid for the property in 2007.
Irish investor Alanis Capital and the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, the vehicle set up to wind down Anglo Irish, have instructed Savills to sell the 133,000 sq ft shopping centre for around £25m – a circa 8% yield.
They paid £87m – a yield of around 5% – for the mall at the height of the property boom.
Since then, however, the Metquarter – once a favourite of Liverpool’s WAGs – has faced stiff competition from Grosvenor’s nearby 2.4m sq ft Liverpool One, which opened in 2008, and has been affected by the rising number of collapses within the retail sector, including Miss Sixty and Flannels.
Rhodri Davies, senior director at CBRE, said: “Liverpool One has generated a large supply of new and modern retail to the city and has had a detrimental effect on more compromised retail destinations. The Metquarter is one of the hardest hit.
“The recent run of retail administrations also hasn’t helped. It is potentially giving back more retailing space to a city that already has a number of vacant units.”
Metquarter was to be included in the proposed sale of the property arm of Anglo Irish Private Wealth, first to Green Property in mid-2011 and then to Key Capital earlier this year. However, both deals collapsed.
Alanis, the investment vehicle of the Dublin-based McCormack family, and the IBRC also own the 80,000 sq ft Royal Exchange in the City and the 240,000 sq ft Kennet shopping centre in Newbury, Berkshire.
All parties declined to comment.
annabel.dixon@estatesgazette.com
