Award Winning
commercial property solutions
By Simon Toseland
As I put pen to paper to review activity within the Wellingborough commercial property market, someone has won £45m on the Euro Lottery and Gordon Brown has demostrated his spilling skels to the nayshun.
Now either you’ll place your head in both hands and stare despondently at the small bottle of Tipp-Ex on your desk or you’ll smile and move on. Your glass will either be half empty or half full.
Wellingborough’s glass is definitely half full, at least from where I’m sitting. In my other article in this month’s Business Times, I report a generally upbeat review of the local market. I can back this up now with news of a few of the deals we’ve recently concluded.
Acting for Ciel Properties we’ve let another 6,523 sq ft of office space in 12 Sheep Street – Wellingborough’s prime town centre office building, taking lettings so far this year to over 16,000 sq ft. Only 3 suites now remain available offering from 900 sq ft to 3,500 sq ft.
We’ve sold (yes a freehold sale!) 1 Church Street, the former Wellingborough Ex-Serviceman’s Club, to a local property developer/ investor and the building is currently undergoing a complete refurbishment. Prop-search.com has been instructed to let the ground floor which extends to some 2,700 sq ft of open plan space and would it suit many different uses from retail / club or even a dance studio (subject to planning).
We’ve let the former Peugeot dealership (Doddington Road Service Station) which now trades as Kingsway Garage and let the former Club House public house in Cambridge Street which will soon re-open as an Indian Restaurant.
On the industrial estates, we structured over 20 leasehold transactions totalling nearly 250,000 sq ft. These include the letting of some 37,000 sq ft at Harrowden Ct on Park Farm, 36,000 sq ft at Rixon Rd on Finedon Rd Industrial Estate and 63,000 sq ft in East Northants. Other transactions were completed on buildings ranging from 1,000 sq ft to 12,000 sq ft.
So a real mixture of deals and evidence that the market is anything but dead.
As with most things in life this is down to a number of factors and not any one reason in particular. Some deals were indeed too good to miss for the parties involved. Some were born out of necessity with little compromise. Others succeeded out of innovative ideas, lateral thought and a desire to un-block the chain.
By Simon Toseland
As I put pen to paper to review activity within the Wellingborough commercial property market, someone has won £45m on the Euro Lottery and Gordon Brown has demostrated his spilling skels to the nayshun.
Now either you’ll place your head in both hands and stare despondently at the small bottle of Tipp-Ex on your desk or you’ll smile and move on. Your glass will either be half empty or half full.
Wellingborough’s glass is definitely half full, at least from where I’m sitting. In my other article in this month’s Business Times, I report a generally upbeat review of the local market. I can back this up now with news of a few of the deals we’ve recently concluded.
Acting for Ciel Properties we’ve let another 6,523 sq ft of office space in 12 Sheep Street – Wellingborough’s prime town centre office building, taking lettings so far this year to over 16,000 sq ft. Only 3 suites now remain available offering from 900 sq ft to 3,500 sq ft.
We’ve sold (yes a freehold sale!) 1 Church Street, the former Wellingborough Ex-Serviceman’s Club, to a local property developer/ investor and the building is currently undergoing a complete refurbishment. Prop-search.com has been instructed to let the ground floor which extends to some 2,700 sq ft of open plan space and would it suit many different uses from retail / club or even a dance studio (subject to planning).
We’ve let the former Peugeot dealership (Doddington Road Service Station) which now trades as Kingsway Garage and let the former Club House public house in Cambridge Street which will soon re-open as an Indian Restaurant.
On the industrial estates, we structured over 20 leasehold transactions totalling nearly 250,000 sq ft. These include the letting of some 37,000 sq ft at Harrowden Ct on Park Farm, 36,000 sq ft at Rixon Rd on Finedon Rd Industrial Estate and 63,000 sq ft in East Northants. Other transactions were completed on buildings ranging from 1,000 sq ft to 12,000 sq ft.
So a real mixture of deals and evidence that the market is anything but dead.
As with most things in life this is down to a number of factors and not any one reason in particular. Some deals were indeed too good to miss for the parties involved. Some were born out of necessity with little compromise. Others succeeded out of innovative ideas, lateral thought and a desire to un-block the chain.
An example of this is the deal now available on a 19,350 sq ft factory / warehouse on Park Farm where the vendor of the building has instructed prop-search.com to offer the freehold interest for sale at £1,300,000 with the vendor providing an initial mortgage over the first 3 years and a deposit required of just £100,000 (so over a 90% mortgage). Further information on this offer and the terms and conditions applying, can be obtained from Simon Toseland at prop-search.com on 01933 22 33 00.
This isn’t the only building available with the vendor offering the money to buy it! On Harrowden Court again on Park Farm, prop-search.com, acting for Rotherhill developments, is offering freehold purchasers access to privately sourced funds to finance the purchase of buildings.
Initiatives available on leasehold property include stepped rents (starting low, with a gradual increase over years) staggered rent free periods, longer half rent periods (where occupiers can pay half the agreed headline rent for an agreed period) and even moving costs paid!
It’s important to point out that the majority of landlords are not and should not, agree deals at any cost. It’s the balanced deals that are succeeding and are more sustainable.
With the economy unlikely to spring back to life any time soon, we like to compare current market conditions to a diet. It’s a way of life and will be for the foreseeable future. Obviously they’ll be the odd cream cake to scoff, washed down with a glass of champers and no doubt there will also be the odd time when all that’s left in the fridge is a bag of mouldy salad that frankly you were never going to eat anyway.
The key to survival or dare I venture success, is to leave something ‘in the pot’ for the next man.
Life is indeed like a box of chocolates.