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The June quarter day is coming amidst predictions of low rent collection in the UK commercial property market. Landsec is reported to be preparing for 75% of retail rent to go unpaid. Yet could Manchester and Birmingham escape the worst?
An analysis based on 10,000 UK commercial properties and 35,000 separate leases suggests that Manchester saw 21% of rent go missing in March, a poor performance compared with Cambridge (7%) and Bristol (9%) but appreciably better than London (40%). The UK average was 30%. Birmingham’s performance was roughly comparable to Manchester’s at 18%.
Commercial property management platform Re-Leased, which published the data, assessed the proportion of rent collected in the 25 days after the March quarter day, and compared it with performance in 2019 and 2018.
Re-Lease argued the figures show that Manchester is relatively resilient.
“Behind the overall UK picture, there are significant variations in rent collection across key regions and cities,” Re-Leased chief executive Tom Wallace said.
