West End landlord Shaftesbury (SHB) said that although most of its recreation and retail sites have now reopened, a number of tenants have indicated that sales are well down on levels recorded prior to the outbreak.
That will come as no surprise given existing work-from-home edicts and the absence of tourist footfall in one of Europe’s premier nightlife draws. Shaftesbury’s estate incorporates parts of London’s Chinatown and Carnaby Street. But London is not so much ‘swinging’ nowadays, as swingeing, at least in terms of the cuts to rental income.
That shortfall is set to continue for a while longer, as Shaftesbury has extended support arrangements for tenants by a further three months to the end of December 2020. The aggregate effect of the various measures is that 41 per cent of rents due for the six months to September 30 have been collected. Around 10 per cent of rents are expected to be subject to deferrals, while 23 per cent have been waived and 26 per cent remained outstanding as of September.
By the end of August, the group’s EPRA (European Public Real Estate Association) vacancy rate stood at 9.7 per cent of estimated rental value, double that of the rate at the end of March, driven in main by residential channels, as “occupiers from overseas returned to their countries of origin and demand from long-stay international business and leisure travellers halted”.
