Charities Property Fund is now the twentieth largest charity in the UK by assets after the purchase of four car showrooms has taken its net asset value to £510m.

The acquisition means that the Fund, which was the first common investment fund available to all charities in England and Wales, is now fully invested.

The four showrooms were purchased in Chester, Worcester, Harrogate and Solihull and all sell premium car brands such as Rolls Royce, BMW and Jaguar. All have “very long” leases with annual fixed rental increases and options to extend the lease by a further 20 years. They will produce a yield of 7.2 per cent after the cost of acquisition.

Having launched in the year 2000, the Fund has bucked the trends to grow significantly over the past three years, purchasing the equivalent of one property a month since 2009. It currently has 1,292 charity investors.

Harry de Ferry Foster, fund director at Cordea Savills which manages the fund, says: “We are delighted that we have been able to raise over £300m of new equity  over the last three and a half years in a very difficult market and we have also successfully invested it while continuing to substantially outperform the index.”

The Fund provides a net yield of 6 per cent, outperforming the average divided payable by the funds in the IPD Pooled Property Fund Index, which sits at 4.5 per cent.