GPE Nets Rents North Of £200 Per SF In Flex Business

Great Portland Estates has secured a trio of lettings at a new flexible office building it has launched in Farringdon, netting rents that average more than £200 per SF.

GPE said in a market update that it has leased 11,300 SF of the 48K SF 6 St Andrew Street office building it owns in Farringdon. 

The building is part of its fully managed flexible office offering. The company has 525K SF of fully managed flexible offices and wants to double that figure in the coming years. 

The space at 6 St Andrew Street has been let faster than GPE’s underwrite, having launched in November, and is 13% ahead of estimated rental values, the company said. Its average rent is £203 per SF. 

At the end of September, the average rent per square foot in its flex office portfolio was also £203, and £237 in the West End. The average unit size was 2,549 SF, and the average lease length was 2.8 years.

The business made annualised gross operating income of £20M at the end of September and had total costs associated with it of £10M, producing net operating income of 50%.

The new tenants at 6 St Andrew are Treatwell, a hair and beauty booking platform that signed for 5,490 SF and will occupy the first floor for a two-year term; Clavium, a software development company that signed for 4,650 SF and will occupy the seventh floor for a four-year term with a break at year two; and The Green Finance Institute, a not-for-profit advisory firm that signed for 1,220 SF and will occupy the ground-floor office for a two-year term with a break at 18 months.