£500M West End Sale Process Is Largest Launched In London This Year

Hong Kong Investor Samuel Tak Lee has put a portfolio of West End office buildings up for sale for £500M in a process that will test the appetite of investors for London office and retail assets. 

Tak Lee has appointed Savills and JLL to sell 27 of the 200 buildings that compose the Langham Estate, which is concentrated in and around Great Portland Street, just north of Oxford Street, React News reported. 

If a deal completes, it will be the largest in London this year. The market has stalled as interest rates continue to rise. Data from MSCI showed that the largest transaction in London in the first half of 2023 was the £428M sale of the Fenwick department store by private property company Lazari Investments.

The properties up for sale are a mixture of directly let offices, retail and residential flats, all clustered around the northern end of Great Portland Street, React reported. 

The entire Langham Estate totals 2.1M SF across 13.8 acres of the West End, and it is valued at around £1.6B. The estate dates back to 1925, when the Howard de Walden family sold 40 acres in Fitzrovia. Tak Lee bought the assets in 1994 for £76M.

For several years, Tak Lee owned a quarter of the shares in Shaftesbury, the listed property company that owned Carnaby Street and a big chunk of Chinatown. He sold the stake in 2020 to CapCo, which owns a major part of Covent Garden, precipitating the merger of Shaftesbury and CapCo to create Shaftesbury Capital. 

UK investment volumes were £16.3B in the first half of the year, down 60% on the same period last year, MSCI said.