Lettings hold up for Land Secs

19th Jan 2011 07:10

Property giant Land Securities saw good lettings across its London and Retail portfolios over the past three months with demand from large firms tipped to remain steady.One New Change, in EC4, London, has now fully let the retail sites with 71% of the office space gone. The £350m Trinity Leeds project is now 45% let, 12% in solicitors' hands and a further 8% at an advanced stage of negotiations (combined total 65%). Park House, Oxford Street, W1 has 85% of its retail units with solicitors.Voids in the like-for-like portfolio were down 5.7% in the quarter to December (5.9% in the previous three months). The void level includes units let on a temporary basis at 1.2%. A further 0.6% is under offer. Units in administration were down slightly in the like-for-like portfolio at 0.3%.LandSecs bought £159.4m of property in the last three months at an average yield of 6.8%, while sales totalled £59.8m at 1.2% below March 2010 valuation."We expect a wider range of buying opportunities in 2011, although current flows of capital into the sector mean that bidding may remain competitive. The first quarter of 2011 is likely to see mixed news flow around the consumer and the economy, but we expect occupational demand from large corporates to remain steady. It is our expectation that we will soon be in a position to start a further retail development at the Atlas Site in Glasgow, such is the interest in the new space that will be created," chief executive Francis Salway said.