CBRE's Trammell Crow Co. real estate development business has bought Candour, the London-based office developer, as Trammell Crow expands into additional property sectors in the United Kingdom.
Candour said it founders, Toby Pentecost and Dan Rees, will join TCC as senior vice presidents and co-heads of United Kingdom offices.
CBRE said the acquisition was the first part of plans to expand Trammell Crow Co., or TCC, which has focused on industrial in Europe, into office development across the continent. Trammell Crow launched its European business in earnest in October 2019 with its acquisition of London-based multifamily development firm Telford Homes.
Candour’s 850,000 square feet of commercial projects under construction or in the pipeline will be completed by TCC, including Welcome Building in Bristol, 39 Deansgate in Manchester city center, and the repositioning of two London offices at 25-28 Old Burlington Street and 20 Gresham Street. It is also working on plans for a major airport logistics hub at Heathrow.
Trammell Crow enters the United Kingdom office market as it struggles to bounce back from the impact of the pandemic.
“There is now close to 110 million square feet of vacant office space across the United Kingdom, a 75% increase on the amount vacant when the pandemic struck and the highest figure in nine years,” according to a CoStar Market Analytics report. “That figure is expected to top 140 million square feet in 2025 as a wave of new buildings complete construction in an environment of weak demand. This would equate to a vacancy rate of over 10%, up from 7.9% today and less than 5% in March 2020.”
However, Trammell Crow said it sees opportunity at the higher end of the office market.
The United Kingdom “office sector fundamentals remain attractive, particularly for well-conceived, newly developed, ESG-focused properties,” David Neuman, TCC’s president of Europe, said in a statement. ”With Dan and Toby leading our efforts, we are well positioned to make an immediate impact in the sector."
TCC said it is the largest real estate developer in the United States. It has an industrial and logistics development footprint across several European markets.
Founded in 1948, TCC has developed or acquired nearly 2,900 buildings valued at $75 billion and over 655 million square feet. As of Sept. 30, TCC had $15.4 billion of projects in process and $14.5 billion in its pipeline. It employs 650 professionals in 28 cities throughout the United States and Europe.
It has bought three industrial sites in the United Kingdom since launching in the country in 2021, in Sheffield, Milton Keynes and Heywood near Manchester, with construction having begun on the first two. It also has a speculative pipeline of around 1.2 million square feet. The firm also has sites in Germany, Spain and the Czech Republic.
For an interview with then European chief Ian Worboys a year into the launch of TCC on the Continent click here.