Net Lease Office Properties, the offices REIT spun out of and managed by US sale-and-leaseback specialist WP Carey, is putting up for sale takeaway delivery business Just Eat's 218,130-square-foot office campus in Sunderland as the group looks to significantly scale back its occupation.
Knight Frank has been appointed to sell the Rainton House campus at Rainton Bridge in Sunderland, which Just Eat took on assignment from Npower in 2021 seeking £11.5 million, or a net initial yield of 23.22% and a capital value of £52.72 per square foot.
The lease expires on 5 August 2025. Just Eat has since spent £11 million on fit-out.
Knight Frank says the delivery business has now indicated it would like to remain in 45,000 square feet of the building, three years after it pledged a multimillion pound investment into the Sunderland region.
The group took the space in the middle of a pandemic-accelerated boom for online food delivery.
The campus comprises four interconnecting buildings over four floors, which can be subdivided into separate buildings. They are on a 12.24-acre site with 862 parking spaces. The passing rent is £2,849,404 a year or £13.06 per square foot.
It says the BREEAM Very Good building is suitable for continued office use or a range of potential alternative uses, subject to planning.
The building was the call centre home of Npower which sold it via a sale and leaseback to US investor WP Carey in 2015. WP Carey bought it for £32.5 million or a net yield of 7.36% and then leased it to Npower on a 100year lease at £11.64 per square foot, subject to a rent review in year five.
It was widely reported that Just Eat's job creation plans in Sunderland involved the consolidation of call centre roles in Bulgaria and India. When Just Eat signed for the building it said it was part of plans to create more than 1,500 customer service jobs over the next 12 months in the area.
It pledged an investment of more than £100 million into the region across the next five years which would go towards creating a modern workspace for the team, equipment, training and jobs and moving staff back to hybrid working.
Just Eat was founded by Danish entrepreneurs in 2001 and is headquartered in London. It acts as an intermediary between independent takeaway food outlets and customers and operates in 13 countries throughout Europe, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas.
It was listed on the London Stock Exchange until it was acquired by Takeaway.com in February 2020.
In September of last year WP Carey announced it intended to spin off a portfolio of 59 office properties into a separate publicly traded REIT called Net Lease Office Properties by way of a pro rata special dividend of common shares of Net Lease Office Properties to W. P. Carey common stockholders. The 59 properties included Rainton House. The spin-off took place on 1 November 2023.
Net Lease Office Properties is externally managed and advised by wholly owned affiliates of WP Carey.
(This story was updated on 19 June to provide further information on Net Lease Office Properties.)