London & Regional Makes New Office Investment As £2.8B London Portfolio Weathers Storm
London & Regional, the property company of billionaire brothers Ian and Richard Livingstone, has made a new investment in the London office market as financial results show the value of its London holdings remained resilient during the coronavirus pandemic.
L&R bought a 45K SF multi-let office building in Hammersmith, west London, for £20M from Columbia Threadneedle, CoStar reported. The building is half-vacant and could be converted to an educational facility or hotel, CoStar said. The price paid represents a net initial yield of 4.8%.
The deal comes as L&R revealed financial results for the year to December 2020 for the subsidiary that owns its London office assets. It has separate companies that own its hotel portfolio and its investments in major development schemes in countries like Panama and Cuba.
The value of the office portfolio dipped slightly, from £2.9B to £2.8B, the results said. Turnover, the majority of which comes from rent, dropped from £139M in 2019 to £114M in 2020, with some of the drop down to a change in accounting rules for one of its subsidiaries, and some of the drop coming from giving out rent concessions as a result of the pandemic.
In October this year, the company said it refinanced a £114M loan secured against St George’s Court, a 176K SF office in the West End leased to the Ministry of Defence. The building is valued at £197M.
