An office block that sold for £3.2m – nearly eight times the sum it fetched at auction 20 years ago – was the standout lot at Acuitus’s biggest sale to date.
The sale raised £71m from 128 lots, of which 104 sold – an 81% success rate.
A freehold, seven-floor, 50,628 sq ft office block with a restaurant on the ground floor, in Norwich was sold to a private property company for £3.2m off a guide of £3m to £3.1m. Generating £77,042 pa, the asset has a gross yield of 2.4%. Five of the floors are vacant and there is basement parking and permission for 84 flats.
The property, Grosvenor House, last came under the hammer in 1996, when it was sold by Jones Lang LaSalle on behalf of British Rail for £415,000.
Acuitus chairman Richard Auterac oversaw both sales, and said it was an “emotive moment” to see the property in the auction room once again – and to see its value soar. He said: “It is exciting that we can offer these opportunities. Twenty years ago, offices and retail were the only things possible for that building.”
Regional retail properties with new leases have also been doing particularly well in the past six months, he said.
A 3,397 sq ft building in Lowestoft, Suffolk, let to an outdoor shop for £40,000 pa on a new 10-year lease, sold for £502,000 – a 7.9% yield.
Auterac said that while the London market had realised as early as 2008 that properties were over-rented – and adjusted leases accordingly – it had taken longer for the regions to gather sufficient evidence of this.
The sale was held on 13 October at the Radisson Blu Portman hotel, W1.
