Great Portland Estates buys West End site, signs new £150m loan

GPE said it has bought the special purpose company holding the long leasehold interest of Whittington House, WC1, which is currently let on a short-term basis, at an annual rent of £5.2m with vacant possession expected in the first quarter of 2025.

The 74,500 square-foot building "provides GPE with an exciting opportunity to create outstanding office spaces that draw upon its iconic Richard Seifert & Partners design, delivering eight floors of sustainable offices with market leading amenity, fronting on to the newly pedestrianised Alfred Place," the company said in a statement.

The refurbishment should be complete by the first quarter of 2027, coinciding with a potentially historic level of undersupply of such space, GPE said.

"Whittington House is our first HQ acquisition following our rights issue in May and meets all of our acquisition criteria. At a significant discount to replacement cost, the building has angles to exploit and our refurbishment will deliver high quality, sustainable space into a market that is increasingly starved of such supply," said GPE's senior investment manager Alex Baden-Powell.

In a separate statement, GPE said it has signed a new £150m RCF with an initial three-year term which may be extended to a maximum of five years.

"Alongside GPE's existing ESG-linked bank facilities, and the recently announced £250 million sterling sustainable bond, the RCF extends our weighted average debt maturity to over seven years," the company said.

The RCF gives the company further flexibility "to capitalise on the exciting pipeline of opportunities that we are unearthing", said chief financial and operations officer Nick Sanderson.