UK Regional Investment Rockets 22% As It Rides The Warehouse Wave

The stampede into warehouse real estate has pushed UK regional property investment volumes up to £27.7B ($37.6B) in the first three quarters of 2021, a 22% hike on the average January-to-September period in the five years before the coronavirus pandemic.

Compared to 2020, this year's transaction volume is up nearly 60% to date. With only nine months of the year in the books, 2021 is already the second-best year on record for regional industrial deal-making, new data from Real Capital Analytics showed.

There is another £2.4B of regional deals currently under contract of which £840M is industrial, suggesting investor appetite is not yet quenched.

Blackstone is top of the buyer list, spending £2B on UK regional industrial assets. Of this £1.7B was accounted for by the acquisition of the Project Alaska portfolio of warehouse properties let to supermarket chain Asda. 

Second on the list was UK manager M7, which spent £320M. M7 Real Estate’s acquisition by Oxford Properties was completed last month.

Third spot was claimed by JP Morgan, with a £300M tally so far in 2021.

Investors spent more than £10B on UK regional industrial assets in the first three quarters of 2021. This is 35% more than Q1 to Q3 spending on regional offices and retail combined.

Industrial pricing was already climbing before the coronavirus pandemic hit, but the crisis lit the touch-paper under the market, Real Capital Analytics said. RCA’s industrial price index for the UK showed prices increased by 13% in the first half of the year. This compares with a 2% fall in retail prices, which remain well down on their pre-Global Financial Crisis peak.