Durham retail park included in £43m LondonMetric sale

LondonMetric Property has offloaded a number of its assets for a total of £42.8m, including a retail park in Durham, which fetched £14.1m.

Dragon Lane Retail Park spans 58,000 sq ft and is currently let to The Range and Lidl. The asset purchaser was not disclosed.

Alongside the retail park, the real estate investment trust (REIT) has sold a 28,000 sq ft urban warehouse in Croydon for £8.1m and a “long income” property nearby to London Bridge for £3.1m.

Additionally, LondonMetric has sold an urban warehousing estate in Croydon and another in Oxford as a portfolio, fetching £17.5m.

The REIT said that the combined sales are in line with the book value of the assets as of the end of March.

Andrew Jones, chief executive of LondonMetric, said: “We continue to see good liquidity for our assets at prices in line with current book values. These sales further reduce our floating rate debt which is now only £35 million and represents just 4% of total drawn debt. This will have a positive impact on our earnings as well as further reduce our loan to value.”

LondonMetric said that its total sales since 31 March have reached £64m in value.

In May, the REIT announced the acquisition of a Columbia Threadneedle-managed property trust for approximately £198.6m, with the deal coming into effect at some point in early July.