Secure Income REIT has collected the vast majority of rent due from tenants at the start of January.
The company said in a stock exchange update that 98.6% of the £21.6m due between 25 December and 7 January had been collected, including £1.6m in Travelodge rent as well as rent from Alton Towers-owner Merlin Entertainments after a six-month deferral period. Further deferred rent of £17.8m will not fall due until late September this year.
The REIT also confirmed that annualised Travelodge rents after CVA concessions had risen from roughly a third of contractual rents for April-December 2020 to 70% since 1 January. That figure is expected to rise again to 100% on 1 January 2022.
Nick Leslau, chairman and chief executive of Prestbury Investment Holdings, which manages the REIT, has spoken at length of the challenges landlords have faced in dealing with tenants during the Covid-19 crisis, particularly during the CVA process.
In an interview with EG last year, he said: “We have seen the complete abuse of the CVA system sponsored by the government to, not protect companies nearing liquidation, but literally to renegotiate freely entered into landlord-tenant leases with absolute impunity.
“We are still treated like operating feudal fiefdoms, Rachmanite baddies. And the CVA process has been the biggest abuse of landlord-tenant relations that I’ve ever heard of, actually since the date of the Russian Revolution. It’s horrendous.”
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