LGIM Real Assets has acquired Lineside Industrial Estate in Sussex for €23.8m (£21m). The south-east industrial estate has been bought on behalf of Legal & General’s Managed Property Fund from Cording Real Estate Group. Located in Arndale Road at Littlehampton between Portsmouth and Brighton, the freehold multi-let estate comprises 28 industrial and trade counter units, totalling 207,360ft². It is let to 22 tenants at an average headline rent of €6.15 (£5.43) /ft² with a weighted average unexpired lease term of 5.2 years to expiry and 3 years to tenant breaks. There is an additional 0.85-acre development site, for which Cording obtained planning consent for 13,183ft² of industrial space.
Mark Russell, Senior Fund Manager of the Managed Property Fund, commented: “This is a great buy for the Fund, providing a rare opportunity to purchase a relatively large south-east industrial asset within a supply-constrained market. The purchase allows us from day one to implement a number of genuine asset management initiatives to capture further rental growth, which will deliver strong returns to our investors.”
Adam Crickmore, Fund Manager at Cording, said: “We sold Lineside after we had applied our asset management strategy and completed our business plan. This involved increasing rental levels to €7.9 (£7) /ft² and securing planning consent for the additional land. Lineside is the third asset to be sold from a portfolio of six UK industrial estates, which we acquired in March 2015 at a blended net initial yield of 9.25%”.
