British Land has collected 46% of the rent due from retail tenants during the December quarter, despite hailing “resilient” footfall at its shopping assets.
The FTSE 100 REIT said in a stock market update that it collected £42m of rent from retail occupiers and £44m (95% of the total due) from office tenants. That puts its total December rent collection at 71% before taking into account adjustments made to help tenants.
British Land has now received 72%% of September rent from retail tenants, 73% of June rent and 49% of March rent. For office tenants, those figures are 99%, 99% and 98%.
“We continue to engage with those customers who have strong businesses, but have been disproportionately impacted by Covid-19, to help them manage their rental obligations,” the update said.
“We are agreeing solutions which are both equitable and mutually beneficial, generally involving moves to monthly rents, deferrals and partial settlement of outstanding rents for the period of closure in return for lease extensions, reduced incentives, commitments to additional space and the removal of lease breaks.”
The company said almost three-quarters of its stores were operational on 24 December and that “footfall and sales proved resilient in the four weeks to Christmas”, with “well located, open air retail parks” outperforming, at 85% of the sales made in the same period last year.
The REIT has continued to offload retail assets and said it struck deals to sell some smaller sites for £19m in recent weeks.
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