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A luxury apartment scheme in south west London has been put into administration, one of the first developments in London to see administrators brought in since the onset of the coronavirus.
Partners from Moorfields were appointed administrators to Parkview Battersea in August. The company owns the site on which a 15-storey scheme called The View was set to be developed. The development value has previously been reported as £42M.
The administrators have appointed Knight Frank to sell the site, which was owned by London residential developer West Eleven. The developer did not respond to a request for comment.
Enabling works on the site have been completed, and the scheme was set to be finished this year but did not progress beyond those initial works. The scheme has 31 luxury and eight affordable apartments, with views of Battersea Park, plus 16K SF of office space on the three lower floors, which has been forward-sold to a private family office on a 999-year lease.
The administrators did not respond to a request for comment on why they had been appointed on the scheme. Accounts at Companies House for the company now in administration show the company had £12M of debt, including a £7.7M loan from challenger bank OakNorth. The accounts say the loan has an interest rate of 7.6% and is repayable within two years of being drawn down. The charge is dated 2018.
The other charge against the company’s assets is held by a special purpose vehicle called Culvert Road (Cogress). Investor Cogress provided £2.5M of capital to the project in 2018, according to a press release from the company. Another release indicates the investment had been exited, but the charge is still outstanding at Companies House.
The luxury London residential market saw a slowdown in sales and a dip in prices as a result of the UK’s decision to leave the EU, with values in some areas falling as much as 20% between 2014 and 2019, according to Knight Frank. There was a short-lived rebound in the wake of the Conservative party general election victory in December, but the coronavirus crisis has again caused prices to stagnate, Knight Frank said.
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