Martin Property has bought The Mercury Shopping Centre in Romford from Austrian lender Bawag.
The centre was being marketed formally for £25 million but changed hands for closer to £10 million, according to market sources tracking the sale.
The Mercury Centre is located in Romford town centre and comprises 243,089 square feet of value retail and leisure anchored by Asda, Poundland, Premier Cinema, Mecca Bingo and McDonald's. It includes 998 car parking spaces.
Bawag took control of the mall in 2019 from Lone Star, one of a number of UK shopping centres owned by the investment giant that had seen sharp falls in value.
Lone Star bought the seven-strong Tiger portfolio of shopping centres from Rockspring for £260 million in November 2014. Bawag had taken a senior mezzanine portion of the debt backing the acquisition.
The sale comes as the UK shopping centre market struggles to spark into life at the beginning of 2024. It will be lifted by the depth of bidding for a raft of ongoing sales.
There is understood to have been strong investor interest for two large shopping centres in Horsham in Sussex and Burton-on-Trent in the Midlands that are being sold by administrators on behalf of UK fund manager BYM Capital, with transactions expected to be agreed in the coming days.
Swan Walk in Horsham is a 304,025-square-foot shopping centre anchored by Marks & Spencer in an 81,230-square-foot store, and leased to tenants including Boots, Next and H&M along with 25,715 square feet of self-contained offices, let to Creative Assembly.
Knight Frank has been appointed to sell the mall by the receivers seeking £17 million or a net initial yield of 10.5%,
Lunson Mitchenall has been appointed by receivers to sell Coopers Square, a 400,000-square-foot mall in Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire anchored by M&S, Boots, Next and Primark.
The total site area is 9.39 acres and the scheme has a weighted average unexpired lease term of 3.17 years to break and 4.09 to expiry. Total gross income is £2,317,179 per annum. A guide price of £9 million or a 16.33% net initial yield has been attached.
Four parties are understood to have made the final shortlist bidding for Frogmore's The Stratford Centre, the neighbourhood shopping centre that lies opposite the Westfield Stratford mega mall in east London. Frogmore, via JLL, is seeking £106.8 million or a 7% net initial yield.
Savills will also call bidding shortly on two large UK malls, with multiple offers expected on each.
CoStar News revealed in February that Nuveen is selling its 50% interest in the Princesshay estate in Exeter, a major UK shopping centre plus retail, offices, restaurants and leisure in the heart of the city. Savills has been appointed to sell the stake and is thought to be seeking around £40 million. The Crown Estate owns the remainder.
CoStar News also revealed that the private owner of Frenchgate, the 768,000-square-foot shopping centre in the heart of Doncaster, has appointed Savills to seek £35 million or a 10.5% net initial yield.
The year has begun relatively well for UK shopping centre investment thanks to US investment giant Lone Star's return to the sector with the £111 million acquisition of Union Square in Aberdeen from Hammerson, as revealed by CoStar News.
CoStar News revealed last month too that Australia's largest superannuation fund AustralianSuper is in talks, via JLL, to sell its 50% stake in the £300 million Centre:mk shopping centre in Milton Keynes to Royal London Asset Management. And the market continues in particular to expect progress on British Land and Norges's sale of Meadowhall, via CBRE, with a price of in excess of £750 million or a circa 7% net initial yield expected for the whole complex.
But confidence remains fragile with the market keen to see progress on these larger ticket sales, particularly after Abu Dhabi Investement Authority's talks to sell a stake in Liverpool One to Landsec ended last month.