Southwark Council’s HQ to be sold for £150m

Southwark Council’s high profile headquarters building on Tooley Street has been put up for sale for £150m, CoStar News can reveal.

Niche investment agent Whitmarsh Holt Young was today instructed to sell the 205,236 sq ft office building at 160 Tooley Street, SE1, for a net initial yield of 5.04%.

The building is owned by private clients of HSBC Private Bank, which bought it from UBS Global Asset Management in June 2008.

The freehold interest in the property is being sold, which is held in a Guernsey Limited Company. The sale price allows for purchasers costs at 1.8% and a capital value of £730 per sq ft.

Southwark Council took occupation of the Allford Hall Monaghan Morris-designed building in 2009 after signing a 25-year lease without a break from 11 June 2008. The property is fully let to the council and The Mayor and Burgesses of the London Borough of Southwark for more than 20.5 years at a passing rent of £7.69m per annum, subject to five-yearly upward only rent reviews, and equating to a rent of £37.48 per sq ft. The next rent review is due on 24 June 2013.

UBS bought the development in June 2006 from Great Portland Estates, which developed the building to the highest environmental standards. The building comprises 192,358 sq ft of offices, 2,819 sq ft of residential, and 10,059 sq ft of retail space on the ground floor.

The building is the latest prime development to be brought to market in the Southbank which, is currently undergoing a transformation. The Southbank has long been seen as a significant cultural core and is home to the likes of The National Theatre, The Globe Theatre, Tate Modern and the White Cube Gallery.

The area has seen a number of high profile developments fly up, such as The Shard, and the wider London Bridge Quarter, More London, and the Blue Fin building.

160 Tooley Street occupies a freehold site bound by Shand Street to the West and Burnham Street to the East.

The offices have achieved a BREEAM rating of “very good”, and the building was designed to run efficiently to reduce costs to the occupier and has been hailed by CIRIA as one of the most efficient commercial project in London.