An Aberdeen office complex which is up for sale at offers in excess of £21 million is part of an “amazing success story in the Granite City, a property expert said last night.
Derren McRae, head of office for CBRE in Aberdeen, was speaking after it emerged the North Sea headquarters of Middle East oil firm Taqa are being marketed as a “long income office investment opportunity”.
Taqa is a sub-tenant of the two office buildings, which are currently owned by Columbia Threadneedle Investments and let t0 Transocean.
Nearly 77,000sq ft of Grade A stock up for grabs at Prime Four
The property at Prime Four business park in Kingswells offfers a total of 76,994sq ft of Grade A office accommodation.
Mr McRae said: “Having owned these assets since phase one of the (business park) development was completed, with circa 10-year leases remaining on both buildings to strong tenants and against the backdrop of a positive occupational story at Prime Four, the institutional landlord has decided now is an opportune time to sell these attractive investment properties.
“We anticipate a strong level of investor demand.”
Mr McRae added: “Prime Four Business Park has been an amazing success story for Aberdeen.
“From the park’s inception a number of local, national and international companies made the decision to locate their UK headquarters there.
“Its developer (Drum Property Group) has delivered numerous high-quality bespoke office buildings, all set in an extremely attractive employee-centric setting.”
He continued: “As a consequence of energy market fluctuations and new office working practices, there has been a degree of surplus office space available in the park over recent years.
“However, all of that space is now either let up or under offer – which means there is no ready-to-occupy space available at Prime Four. Across the country we are seeing companies looking to move offices to the best-in-class, environmentally sustainable buildings with strong amenities for staff.”
Prime Four business park has benefited from flight to quality
This is a trend which has favoured Prime Four, resulting in high levels of demand for any available space, Mr McRae said, adding: “Take up in the park has also not only purely been focused on the energy sector, as in recent years we have also seen professional service and IT companies join the growing list of occupiers based there.”
In its brochure for the buildings up for sale, CBRE said: “2023 has experienced very limited supply of office investments being brought to the market in Aberdeen, despite the attractive yield discount that the city has to offer compared to other UK centres.”
We anticipate a strong level of investor demand.”
Derren McRae, CBRE
The city’s office market is continuing to witness an “intensified flight to quality
in a post pandemic market”, the firm said, adding the availability of such accommodation is “likely to fall further as we move into 2024 and beyond”.
Aberdeen-based Drum has used Prime Four as a platform to deliver similar large scale commercial property developments across the UK.
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