Craigard

Spectrum

SOLD MAY 2019
Bought For: £2.7m
Sold For: £7m
The Asset Multi-let office situated in premier South Coast business park.

Overview

Spectrum is a landmark office building situated in a highly prominent position overlooking the central lake of Solent Business Park.

The building was constructed in the late 80’s and totals just under 40,000 sq. ft. on three floors with an excellent parking ratio of 1:200.

Previously tenanted by Santander and owned by Mapeley, which was in financial difficulty, Craigard secured the opportunity to acquire the freehold in October 2012 on a very short timetable at a highly attractive figure of £800,000 – £20 per sq. ft.

The building required refurbishment and new M&E but had excellent
flexible floor plates and good floor-to ceiling heights. At this extraordinary pricing, Craigard quickly assembled a syndicate to acquire the building in under a month, receiving support from two other corporate investors in raising the cash to purchase and refurbish the building (a pre-let of the ground floor was secured to MITIE).

Craigard systematically remodelled the building into a modern energy efficient (EPC rating B) facility and got it fully let with six tenants paying rents of £10.00 – £12.50 per sq. ft., creating an annual rent in the order of £475,000.

After careful analysis, Craigard offered the investors the opportunity to sell the property on conclusion of the initial business plan or to refinance and hold it because rents before the recession were in the range of £15.00 – £17.00 per sq. ft. on Solent Business Park. This meant Spectrum still had some reasonable growth. There was no reason, with declining supply, that rents should not recover to that level over the next few years. Given it was newly refurbished at the time, the building was an attractive investment and there are real prospects for further returns.

Investors took this concept on board and a refinancing was completed with Santander – raising £3.2million against a value at the time of £6million. This allowed repayment to investors of their original stakes, rolled up interest of 8% per annum, and Craigard was paid part of its performance bonus – reinvesting some of its fee as equity in the deal. One of the investors decided not to participate in the refinancing, so an agreement was reached to acquire their stake.

Following the successful conclusion of further lease events following the refinance, and therefore increasing the rental income yet again, investors investigated a quiet off-market sales campaign and obtained an offer of £7million from a private investor which was duly accepted and concluded in May 2019. This was a spectacular investment for Craigard - taking the asset from a dilapidated empty building to a top specification, refurbished and fully-let asset over a period of seven years and returning 15.5% per annum to investors over the period.

Get in touch

contact
01489 880100
info@craigard.biz
1650 Parkway, Solent Business Park, Whiteley, Fareham, PO15 7AH
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