Hansteen in £42m industrial estate swoop
HANSTEEN Holdings has agreed to spend £42.25m on a portfolio of 17 industrial estates, with four of them in the North West.
It has acquired the properties, referred to as the Spice portfolio, from Legal & General’s Industrial Property Investment Fund.
The portfolio has 137 units totalling 810,700 sq ft. As well as the four North West estates, there are six in the South East, five in the Midlands, one in the South West and one in Wales. The identity and location of each site was not available at the time of publication.
The current passing rent is £3.4m a year which is contracted to rise to £3.7m. The void rate is 4.7%. Hansteen said the acquisition was being part-funded from a £25m increase in the facility for the Hansteen UK Industrial Property Unit Trust II (HPUT II) with the Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays. The deal is expected to complete by the end of this month.
Following the acquisition HPUT II will have around £120m of assets, with a void rate of approximately 19%, yielding 8.25%.
Hansteen director Mark Ovens said: “We were attracted to the Spice portfolio by a combination of the quality of assets and the timing – at a point in the occupational market which is widely being interpreted as a point of inflection. Within our own portfolios, we are seeing new levels of confidence in occupiers and their decision making, a situation being recognised by valuers.”
