Investor Addington Captial and private equity firm BauMont Real Estate Capital have bought Old Change House mixed-use building in London for around £23 million.
They plan to comprehensively refurbish the building at 128 Queen Victoria Street, EC4 to create best-in-class category-A offices with enhanced ESG credentials.
The yield on contracted income is 6.55%. The vendor was Coal Pensions Limited. It was advised by Delancey.
Old Change House is a 56,814 square foot detached office building with a basement, ground and also five upper floors including 3,732 square feet of ground floor retail. The building is currently 61% occupied, with existing office tenants including Walker Crips plc, GB Group plc, EZE Software EMEA Ltd and also the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Retail tenants are Pret a Manger and also Pen and Brush Limited (trading as Nusa Kitchen).
The building was originally constructed by Japanese developer, Nissho Iwai in 1997, before being acquired by Coal Pensions Limited in 2000. It was partly refurbished in 2018.
It has been sold with two vacant office floors totalling 18,600 square feet. Further leases expire in 2025 and 2027.
Attractive risk-adjusted returns of Old Change House
The refurbishment is well timed to take advantage of a shortage in top quality offices in the City, which Addington and BauMont believe will provide the potential for higher rental levels, whilst also re-establishing its institutional credentials.
Martin Roberts, Principal of Addington Capital says, “The opportunity to undertake a rolling refurbishment programme of an income-producing asset like Old Change House offers attractive risk-adjusted returns. We are actively pursuing similar “brown to green” projects across Central London, allowing us to upgrade buildings with strong fundamentals to create the high quality, ESG-compliant space, sought after by today’s occupiers. We believe that there will be other similar opportunities over the coming months.”
He adds, “We are delighted to extend our working relationship with BauMont, with whom we have worked on three residential projects in the London area. This is our first venture together into the commercial property markets.”
Delancey was advised by Knight Frank and Addington Capital by Savills.
