The Capital Markets team at CBRE in Manchester announces a record year of deals during 2018, advising clients on more than £1.5BN of commercial real estate investment transactions.
The Manchester team concluded more than 40 individual transactions across a diverse range of sectors, including office, logistics, retail, leisure and healthcare, demonstrating their depth of expertise and market coverage in the North West and beyond. In Manchester City Centre alone, CBRE acted for either the seller or buyer on over 80% of all office investment transactions.
Disposal highlights include the sale of prime city centre investment Peter House in Manchester, on behalf of Patrizia Property Investment Managers for £45.1M. CBRE also advised AM Alpha, the Munich-based private real estate investor, on the sale of The Zenith Building in Manchester’s CBD to Bet365 for £31.45M resulting in a profit of circa £6.5M during the 15 month hold period. This deal involved cross-service collaboration, drawing on CBRE’s transactional and advisory expertise with CBRE advising AM Alpha on the original acquisition and then subsequently preparing and executing the business plan.
During the year, CBRE advised Bruntwood in securing L&G Capital as a joint venture partner to create ‘Bruntwood Sci-Tech’, the UK’s largest property platform dedicated to driving science and technology growth in the regions. The partnership led to a £360M investment of capital, property and intellectual assets into the new venture.
CBRE also advised Aviva Investors on the long-term partnership with Allied London to deliver Enterprise City – Manchester’s newest city centre neighbourhood focused on a mix of digital, tech and creative industries. Enterprise City is Manchester’s largest ever development funding transaction with Aviva Investors committing more than £300M to the project.
CBRE advised Legal and General Built to Rent Fund on the acquisition of West Tower, Deansgate, a 44-storey residential development and the tallest rented residential scheme in Europe. L&G committed to buy the entire West Tower building on completion of construction in May 2019, which will provide 350 residential apartments along with 150 parking spaces and communal resident’s lounges.
Colin Thomasson, Executive Director and Head of Capital Markets at CBRE in Manchester, commented;
“Our transactional activity reflects the continued attractiveness of Manchester and the wider North-West region. Notwithstanding the challenges presented by Brexit, our local economy is thriving and demand from investors and occupiers remains strong. This is reflected in some of the major lettings confirmed over the last year including Booking.com at Enterprise City, and Qiagen at CityLabs. We expect to see major lettings continuing in 2019.Manchester.
“As Manchester continues to grow, it is becoming more attractive to a range of different businesses in the tech, digital, fin tech, health innovation, creative, film and media sectors and this will ultimately sustain investment over the long term.
“We are continuing to see a high number of new overseas entrants to the market and CBRE’s track record of advising these investors in the North West remains unrivalled.”
