Administrators close to Trafford Press sale

ADMINISTRATORS handling the sale of the partially-built Trafford Press scheme in Manchester say they have received eight offers for the site.

But a deal is being held up by charges registered against the land by disgruntled creditors.

Trafford Press was a high profile scheme for Manchester-based FreshStart Living which involved around 116 apartments across old and new buildings on Chester Road.

It stalled last year leaving around 100 buy-to-let investors without their apartments despite having paid deposits. Some of them have filed unilateral notices at the Land Registry to register their interests in the site.

In a progress report for FSL Properties Trafford Press, administrators at Leonard Curtis said the higher value offers were conditional on the removal of these notices and talks are now taking place with depositors about the return of their cash.

Leonard Curtis said the deposits should have been held by FreshStart’s law firm on the transactions, Gateley, but they were “wrongly” paid to the company. Following negotiations the deposits are now being repaid.

This was part of a £5m professional negligence claim which is also seeking the return of £18,000 in fees, loss of profits, and “loss of chance”.

The administrators added: “Negotiations continue with the key interested parties. For reasons of confidentiality the administrators cannot provide further details at this stage. However, they can confirm that the highest current offer is less than the sum required to repay the secured creditor in full from company property realisations.”

The secured creditor on the site is London-based lender SKPB Services, which is owed £1.8m. The amount owed to unsecured creditors is £1.3m.

One of the Trafford Press investors, Roger Walters, succeeded in winding-up FreshStart in December. Its parent company, Empirical Property Group, continues to trade.