Frasers Group Goes Shopping For More Outlets: The London Deal Sheet
The Deal Sheet is a weekly compilation of Greater London and beyond's biggest leases, sales, financing deals, construction updates and personnel moves. Have news you’d like to submit? Email mark.faithfull@bisnow.com.
Expansionist retail group Frasers has acquired the York Designer Outlet and East Midlands Designer Outlet from Aviva Investors for about £400M as part of disposals from the latter’s Real Estate Active LTAF.
Comprising 120 units and totalling 250K SF, York Designer Outlet Centre is situated on the south edge of York and approximately 10 minutes’ drive from the city centre. East Midlands Designer Outlet was built in 1998 on the site of a former mine and includes more than 65 units spread across 170K SF.
Aviva Investors has owned York and East Midlands retail outlets since 2006, and the sale will enable it to redeploy capital into long-term, high-conviction sectors, including single-family housing and urban logistics, the company said.
“This strategic disposal represents one of our biggest real estate sales in recent years,” Aviva Investors Head of Global Real Estate Equity James Stevens said in a statement.
“It locks-in a strong performance outcome for our investors and gives us fresh capital to redeploy into high conviction sectors such as UK residential. In the last three years, we have actively increased our exposure to the living sector with the intention of growing that to over 25% of the overall real estate portfolio.”
LEASING
Great Portland Estates has let more than 6,200 SF at 170 Piccadilly, W1, bringing the fully managed development to more than 73% let or under offer. A facilities management company will take 1,600 SF on the sixth floor, and a global automotive technology company will take 4,600 SF on the fourth floor. The space has an average rent of £294 per SF.
“Reaching over 73% occupancy at 170 Piccadilly is a clear sign of the momentum behind our fully managed offer. With strong interest ongoing, we’re confident in maintaining this positive leasing momentum across the wider Piccadilly Estate,” GPE Flex Leasing Manager Anna Tweed said in a statement.
DEALS
Grace Real Estate Partners has acquired a 35,700 SF residential building in NW6, London, from a private seller for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition adds an inner-London asset to Grace’s growing UK residential platform, the company said.
The latest acquisition expands the firm’s UK portfolio to four locations, two in London and two in the north-east, and is part of the firm’s target to scale an initial £750M gross asset value UK residential platform over the next two to three years.
The acquisition follows Grace’s purchase of a 110-bed residential portfolio in central London in 2024, as well as two portfolio acquisitions comprising more than 800 units in the north-east completed in 2023 and 2025.
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Knight Frank has been appointed to sell two Mercure Hotels in Northampton and Essex on behalf of a joint venture between Frogmore Real Estate Capital and C1 Capital.
Mercure Northampton is a purpose-built, full-service hotel that comprises 146 en suite bedrooms, a restaurant, a bar area, and meeting and conference facilities, with scope to host 400 guests in its largest function room. The hotel was refurbished in May 2024 when it was rebranded as a Mercure.
Stifford Hall Hotel is an 18th-century manor house with 97 en suite bedrooms, a restaurant, a bar, meeting spaces and a gazebo set on 3.7 acres of landscaped gardens. The hotel was also substantially refurbished as a Mercure and reopened following the rebrand in June 2025.
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M Core has acquired UK retail assets in Halifax, Exmouth, Brighton and Liverpool. LCP UK, part of M Core, will lead asset management for all four properties.
Broad Street Plaza is a town centre leisure and retail scheme in Halifax, anchored by PureGym, Wetherspoon’s, Vue Cinema and Nando’s, plus a multistorey car park with 429 spaces.
Chapel Street Retail Parade, Exmouth, comprises seven ground-floor retail units totalling approximately 22K SF. Abacus House, London Road, Brighton, forms part of a mixed-use development that includes ground-floor retail units beneath student residential accommodation. And Bleasdale Shopping Centre, Aintree, Liverpool, is a fully let neighbourhood retail parade comprising nine units, an office and four self-contained residential flats above, totalling approximately 17,700 SF.
DEBT
Aldermore has provided a £28M commercial real estate facility to Highcross Street Holdings, supporting the refinancing and ongoing operation of a newly developed build-to-rent scheme in Leicester city centre.
The funding supports a joint venture with Monk Estates and Housing Growth Partnership, enabling the scheme to transition from development into a stabilised, income-generating asset.
The mixed-use development comprises 171 studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, alongside a Sainsbury’s store, arranged around a communal courtyard. Amenities include a gym, cinema rooms, a roof garden, business and coworking spaces, and a range of communal social areas, operated under the Hylyfe brand.
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Arc & Co. has structured a debt and equity facility for a 135-bed purpose-built student accommodation development in Bristol, bringing together Downing as senior debt provider and Hame Capital as equity partner in a joint venture with the sponsor Colico Living.
The finalised financing package includes a circa £26M senior development facility from Downing alongside a preferred equity investment from Hame Capital. The facility is designed to support delivery of the scheme through to completion and stabilisation.
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Specialist real estate finance provider Maslow Capital has provided a £36M senior development loan to Audley Construction Group to support the delivery of a 172-unit residential-led scheme in central Maidstone, Kent.
The facility will fund the completion of a mixed-tenure development, comprising two adjacent blocks of 11 and 12 storeys. Once complete, the scheme will deliver 172 apartments alongside 7,300 SF of ground-floor commercial space and 49 car parking spaces.
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Downing Property Finance has completed three purpose-built student accommodation deals worth around £47.5M, providing loans in Glasgow, Bristol and Manchester.
It has agreed a £12M development loan in Glasgow for a conversion project in the city centre that will provide beds for postgraduate students at the University of Glasgow. The Bristol deal is for a £25M development loan for a new build in the city centre.
Meanwhile, in Manchester, Downing is lending £10.5M through a structure that means it funds around 95% of total costs for the deal. The development will include 76 studio apartments and be ready for the 2027 university intake, with an expected gross development value of about £20M.
DEVELOPMENT
Real estate investor Castleforge, in partnership with data centre operator and advisory firm Galaxy Data Centers, has achieved planning consent for a new 15-megawatt data centre development at its Redhill campus.
The new development will include four data halls and follows the partnership's £100M-plus investment in the existing Redhill Data Centre campus in December 2024. The scaling of the campus will see a follow-on £200M investment, with a gross project value of about £500M.
Situated on the existing 7.7-acre industrial estate at Foxboro Business Park, the consented project comprises a single two-storey data centre with four data halls and an accompanying office block.
PEOPLE
A new UK living platform has appointed Johnny Langton as head of operations. Tim Butler, founder and co-investor of Student Roost and one of the founding shareholders and former main board director of Unite Group, is the CEO of the new platform. This announcement follows the firm’s recent appointment of Richard Simpson as Managing Director.
The platform aims to become one of the top five operators of UK rental homes in the next five years and is supported by Australian pension fund AustralianSuper, with a circa £500M commitment made in October.
Langton joins from Greystar, where he held leadership roles across the European platform, including responsibility for the UK student business before taking on a Europe-wide role.
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Real estate advisory firm Newsteer has launched a dedicated flex advisory service line and has appointed Jordan Saleh as head of flex.
The service will work with occupiers, and Saleh brings extensive experience in the flexible office market, having most recently served as head of flex North at CBRE. He also spent seven years at WeWork as leasing director.
