The Charities Property Fund has grown to £865m after reporting £100m of new transactions in December last year.
The Charities Property Fund (CPF) is managed by property investment manager Cordea Savills, and is a common investment fund open to charities in England and Wales enabling them to invest in commercial property.
The fund’s largest transaction of last year was the sale of a multi-let office building in Victoria, London, which was sold to Cern (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) for £26.1m.
Acquisitions during December included the Invictus portfolio of car showrooms, which was acquired from Standard Life for £15.8m, providing a fund yield of 6.4 per cent. It also bought a recently opened block of serviced apartments in central Manchester for £9.5m, reflecting a yield of 6.4 per cent.
According to CPF’s website, the fund operates “on behalf of charities who do not have sufficient funds to create a portfolio large enough to spread the risk of owning individual properties”.
Its portfolio of 106 properties was designed to give charities better access to professional property investment and management while avoiding the “time and expense of property administration”.
Harry de Ferry Foster, fund director for the CPF, said: “2014 was another busy year for the fund with record inflows and a total transaction volume during the year of in excess of £200m. Our acquisitions during the year generated a net yield of 6.7 per cent which is accretive to our income aspirations.
- Civil Society Media’s Charity Property Conference will take place on Tuesday 7 July, 2015 in London, with an overarching theme of change. Tickets are available here.
- The thirteenth Charity Finance Investment Forum will take place on the 9th and 10th March, 2015. The forum and evening dinner, hosted by Charity Finance magazine, is a free event open to charities with investment assets in excess of £5m. A very limited number of places are still available.
