Acuitus raised £10m at its December commercial property auction. Notable lots included the sale of a long-leasehold supermarket investment on the New Kings Road in London (pictured) which sold after strong bidding for £1.51m at a yield of 7.72%.
A public house on George Lane in South Woodford sold for £1.39m and the Bowers Tap public house in Leeds sold for £1.28m. In 2023, Acuitus sold £175m of assets at auction, with an average lot size of £717,000.
Richard Auterac, chairman of Acuitus, said: “Bearing in mind the continuing political, economic and financial turmoil this year that has led to considerable disruption in the wider property market with declining transactional volumes, our results have been resilient. For comparison, our 2022 sales were £184m with an average lot size of £810,000.
“As commercial property auctions are able to capture private equity, it has remained one of the few markets where there is liquidity and transactions continue to take place within defined timescales. Investors have been active across all commercial property sectors in the UK and there has been particular demand for assets which offer strong income flow or whole or partial conversion to residential.
“Our Acuitus investors have sufficient funds to acquire a substantially greater number of assets. Portfolio restructuring has triggered further sales by institutional owners and this has put investment-grade assets within the reach of many private investors for the first time.
“During the first half of 2024, the challenges of refinancing should continue to prompt an increase in asset sales at our auctions while the latter part of the year should see a cut in interest rates and bring greater liquidity into the market.”
The first Acuitus auction of 2024 will take place on 15 February.
