Fox Court, WC1, which is majority let to WeWork, has been sold to a private middle eastern investor for £101.5m – a net initial yield of 5.1%.
The freehold 100,000 sq ft office building was sold by Ellis Short’s private equity fund manager, Kildare Partners, which acquired the property from Karlin Real Estate as part of a £260m UK portfolio in May 2015.
WeWork signed to take 70,000 sq ft at the building in 2015 on a 20-year lease. The rest of the building is let to the government’s appeals service and healthcare management company, Map of Medicine.
The price will be seen as a positive affirmation of the strength of the WeWork covenant. The co-working giant reportedly received a $300m (£238.2m) investment from SoftBank Group Corp last week, a cash injection that values the company at more than $17bn.
The deal follows the sale of WeWork’s London HQ at Moor Place, EC2, in October 2016 to Kingboard Chemical Holdings for £271m – a yield of 4.86%. The first WeWork occupied building to be sold was 33 Queen Street, EC4, which was bought by Corpus Sireo in May for £40m, a yield of 5%.
Cushman & Wakefield advised Kildare Partners.
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