Praxis has added 90-96 Victoria Road, Chelmsford, to its burgeoning national office portfolio as it looks to deploy £200M into regional property to exploit the serious shortage of grade A office space across the UK.
Having invested more than £50M into four deals in as many months, and a further £60M of deals in solicitors’ hands, the UK investor is committed to significantly increasing its portfolio and is targeting best-in-class properties in major economic centres across the country.
Victoria Road, Chelmsford is a 70,000 sq ft prime city centre office developed by insurer, and vendor, MS Amlin in 2015, and Praxis says the building ticks every box in terms of the type of asset they are looking to buy. MS Amlin have taken a lease on part, and other tenants in the building include Medsol Healthcare and Atkins.
Charlie Arden, Investment Manager at Praxis said:
“This acquisition perfectly exemplifies our strategy of acquiring best in class office buildings, situated in constrained leasing markets with strong underlying fundamentals. 90-96 Victoria Road is an outstanding building, developed to an extremely high standard by MS Amlin in a market that is starved of Grade A product.”
Ardern added; “the existing vacancy gives us the opportunity to reposition the building through targeted capital expenditure, enhancing its ESG credentials, and proactively engaging with occupiers seeking high quality office space in Chelmsford city centre”
“We are seeing sustained demand across our portfolio for best-in-class product that is competitively priced, and we are committed to growing our portfolio at a time when a lot of investors still seem to be sat on the side-lines, unable to decide whether offices have a future or not. Frankly, we aren’t seeing a lot of competition in many of the regional submarkets we like. We are confident that we will be able to deliver outsized returns by doing what we are renowned for, namely stock picking and good old fashioned, back to basics, asset management”.
Praxis says it is actively seeking further opportunities across the UK.
Savills and Finn & Co advised on the acquisition.
