Allsop has held its biggest May commercial auction since 2006, with sales of £109.1m.
This pushes its year-to-date sales to £284m – exceeding last year’s January-to-May figure by more than £100m.
Of 204 lots offered at the 16 May sale, 161 sold, giving a success rate of 79%. The average lot size was £586,000, compared with £530,000 last year.
The biggest lot was a leasehold cinema in Southampton, Hampshire, which sold prior for just under £5.5m.
Allsop partner Duncan Moir attributed the success to residential buyers switching to mixed-use investments to avoid the stamp duty increase, and the breaking up of private equity groups’ loan books.
He said: “The loan books that have been trading over the past three to five years are starting to be broken up into a market that is quite hungry for estates.”
A shop let to Hamptons Estate Agents, with a two-bedroom flat above, in Richmond, Surrey, sold for £2.5m off a £2.3m guide, a gross yield of 4.35%.
Demand for multi-let tenancies is particularly high, said Moir. The average yield for these properties dropped to 6.7% this month from 9% last May.
In total, 18 multi-let tenancies were sold for an average of £1.1m. They included a shopping centre in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, which sold for £2.1m off a guide of £1.8m, giving a gross yield of 9.08%.
Moir said: “The wish to have a spread of tenants is quite strong at the moment.” He added that many investors were seeking better returns through active estate management.
The sale took place at the Berkeley, SW1.
