A portfolio of 17 properties, including student accommodation blocks and residential schemes in Bath, has been put up for sale for £124m in a sign of the strength of the city’s property market, despite Covid-19.
Bath-based developer Rengen said the schemes, which also include sites in Bristol and Worcester, contain 634 bed spaces, most of them purpose built.
Eight are completed while the remainder are either under construction or are planned.
Rengen, which was launched in 2007, is one of Bath’s most successful property developers and has been behind a number of the city’s high-profile redevelopments or proposed schemes.
It is best known for transforming Bath’s former Labour Exchange building on James Street West, pictured below, into a mixed-use scheme with 78 student rooms over three new floors and 4,000 sq ft of commercial space on the ground floor.
It has also completed projects at Widcombe Social Club and the Bath Sea Cadets headquarters on St John’s Road, and is behind the Banglo House development on Lower Bristol Road, where it is creating 16 units for key workers with a ground-floor restaurant, a refurbishment in Argyle Place targeted at Bath’s premium short-term holiday rental market, and the conversion of a warehouse in Lymore Gardens into three cluster flats and six studios.
Its current projects include the landmark former Scala cinema in Oldfield Park, which it hopes to partially demolish and refurbish to create a shop, dance studio and flats.
Among its Bristol schemes are the final two phases of the city’s Paintworks mixed-use scheme, where it is helping to create a new creative quarter for the city.
Rengen – a subsidiary of Bristol property group Iesis – has appointed London-based property agents James Andrew International to sell the portfolio. Rengen has delivered and sold two previous schemes with a combined value of nearly £50m.
In 2017, it sold a portfolio of seven student accommodation schemes in Bristol and Bath to PfP for £30m.
It also sold a student accommodation portfolio of four properties in Bath to London-based Empiric Student Property for a combined £16.9m.
James Andrew International director Andrew Soning said: “This is a unique opportunity to invest in quality locations in top university cities in an asset class that has proved to be extremely resilient during these difficult times.”
Of the 17 properties, eight are completed and fully income-producing, generating an annual income of £1.6m.
Five are set to be completed by September, adding £3m to the annual rent generated by the portfolio, while the final four are scheduled to be completed by September next year.
When completed and fully income-producing, the portfolio will produce an annual income of £6.6m, according to James Andrew International. Some 509 of the bedspaces are purpose built while 125 are either private rented sector accommodation or built-to-rent.
The properties are available either individually or as a portfolio.
