City of London

Property Week reports that Lloyd’s of London has struck a deal to stay in its famous City headquarters at One Lime Street until at least 2035 after reaching an agreement with Chinese investor Ping An. The deal will see Lloyd’s remain at One Lime Street for another 10 years, with an option to extend this until 2040. The pair have also agreed to invest in the building to make it more energy efficient.

Property Week reports that flexible workspace provider Fora has reached an agreement with LaSalle Investment Management (IM) to open a new location at Sixty London Wall, expanding its co-working offering in the City of London. The deal will see Fora manage 33,000 sq ft of flexible workspace in the property from Q3 2024, along with a further 10,000 sq ft of shared amenity space including a café, lounge and fitness studio.

City of Westminster

Property Weeks reports that BNP Paribas Real Estate Investment Management (REIM) has acquired 25 Victoria Street, a grade-A building in central London, for £42.5m, marking the first UK acquisition of its European Impact Property Fund. BNP Paribas REIM has purchased the freehold to 25 Victoria Street, which comprises 53,652 sq ft of office, retail and leisure accommodation over a 0.25-acre site, from Delancey Real Estate. This marks the 10th acquisition for EIPF, which was launched in 2020.

Property Week reports Berkeley Estate Asset Management (BEAM) has pre-let the whole of its 176,000 sq ft office scheme in Mayfair to global investment firm Millennium for its European HQ. Asset and development manager BEAM announced the deal as it carried out a comprehensive redevelopment of its landmark 50 Berkeley Street offices. The refurbishment will add new floors and a roof terrace, improve its amenity and end-of-trip facilities and boost its environmental credentials.

Islington 

The Standard reports Mencap charity sells its “too big” London HQ for £8.5m following working from home revolution. Learning disability charity has been based in 19th century Concordia House at 123 Golden Lane since 1978 but decided to move out and sell the freehold after the shift to remote working. Mencap is now renting a new London based around the corner at East One, 20-22 Commercial Street in Spitalfields.

General

Property Week reports housing secretary Michael Gove has today unveiled the government’s long-awaited new National Planning Policy Framework, promising to crack down on planning delays and scrapping the requirement for local authorities to allocate greenfield land to meet housing targets. Gove claimed the new framework will help speed up planning and boost brownfield developments, while also holding low-delivering local authorities to account.

Property Week reports that Middle Eastern investment in central London offices is the busiest it has been since pre-pandemic levels, according to BNP Paribas Real Estate research, with prime West End locations the ‘hottest’ in terms of pricing. As of November 2023, Middle Eastern investment in central London offices stood at £621m. This period also marks the busiest for Middle Eastern office investors since 2019 when the first nine months reached £817m. This is with sovereign wealth funds, institutions and family offices becoming more active across the risk-return spectrum spanning core, core-plus and value add.

Building reports the ministers and Transport for London (TfL) have agreed a new £250m funding package to invest in upgrades to the capital’s infrastructure next year. An existing funding deal, struck last summer after months of wrangling, had been set to run out in March 2024 and the new injection of cash will allow TfL to continue its investment programme, which includes new trains for the Piccadilly line.

City A.M. reports that Londonmetric mulls takeover of Alton Towers owner could create one of the UK’s largest listed landlords. Logistics landlord Londonmetric is understood to be in talks to buy LXi the owner of Alton Towers and Warwick Castle.  If completed, the deal would create a £6.4bn real estate group and the FTSE 250 landlord would acquire all outstanding shares in LXI.