The Charities Property Fund (the Fund) has acquired four new properties bringing its net asset value to £418m in the first quarter of 2011.

The new properties were bought for a total of almost £50m with an average yield of 7.5 per cent. They include a multi-let industrial estate and a leisure club and bring the total number of properties let on long leases by the Fund to 62.

Currently the Fund has 1,226 charities investing in it and in the first quarter new investment was temporarily restricted to protect the returns of existing investors. Dealing is expected to return to normal in the second quarter.

The Fund returned 2 per cent in the first quarter and 8.8 per cent in the 12 months up the end of March, according to Cordea Savills, which runs the Fund. The average lease has 9.8 years to expiry and the vacancy rate is 4 per cent of total rental value.

The Fund was set up in 2000 as the first common investment fund specifically for charities and has seen a marked expansion recently. In 2010 the Fund acquired nine properties and sold two in eight separate transactions and in February it announced that it had doubled in size in the previous 18 months.