Northern Quarter offices up for grabs at £22.4m

Offers are invited for the grade two-listed Fourways, which provides around 50,000 sq ft of refurbished workspace and 11,000 sq ft of retail & leisure in the central Manchester district.

XLB and Pictet are selling the asset, where £5.3m has been spent on improvements since 2019,  through CBRE and ACRE.

Helical bought the building for £16.5m in 2018 before selling it as a three-part package of Manchester assets to XLB Property and Pictet Alternative Advisors in late 2020, garnering £119m for the trio.

The overall square footage is 60,809 sq ft, of which 11,607 sq ft is retail & leisure space.

Average office rents at Fourways are a shade over £30/sq ft, comparing to the city’s prime headline rents of £45/sq ft.

As the Northern Quarter has become more mainstream, top rents there have leapt over the last decade, with the selling agents claiming a 250% increase compared to 28% in the traditional city office core.

Fourways is bringing in close to £1.8m a year in rent, with an average unexpired lease term of four years to break and 5.6 years to expiry.

A purchase at £22.4m would reflect a net initial yield of 7.5%.

As set out in the particulars, the repositioned asset features a “hotel-style” atrium, with retained heritage features including exposed brick walls, timber flooring and steel columns. The revamp works completed in 2020 have led to a BREEAM assessment of Very Good and an EPC B rating.

Tenants at the building include RSK, Lacoste, AND Digital, and Cundall. The Pen & Pencil bar restaurant runs on the ground floor.

There are just a couple of vacant office suites at present at the building, which is managed by Ashdown Phillips.